When she secured a place at the prestigious Kenya High School, all Wanini Kireri – now the Senior Assistant Commissioner-General of Prisons – wanted was to fulfil her dreams to become an air hostess.
What Kireri did not know is that the future held a different dream for her and one that her father was adamant on; joining the Kenya Prisons Service.
For more than 37 years now, she has seen the good, the bad the ugly of Kenya’s correctional facilities.
Joining the Prisons as a cadet trainee, her dream to not only change her life but thousands of other lives behind bars began.
Kireri’s first post of duty was at the Langata Women’s Prison where she her long career in public service unfolded while she was only 21 years old.
In an interview with Citizen TV, Kireri says that top on her reforms was to make life comfortable for the women serving time. It is during her tenure that women prisoners started sleeping on mattresses with bedding unlike in the past where they had to contend with the cold floor.
Just when she hit 25 years in 2006, she was promoted to the rank of Officer-In-Charge and got transferred to Embu Women Prison where she served for nine years. Here, she was confident of herself and just like in Langata, she instituted great reforms.
Kireri notes that she has served in more than seven correctional facilities in the country including Shino La Tewa Maximum Prison in Mombasa.
Her leadership was repelled by prison wardens she found there and prisoners whose cells had a pungent smell that could not get of her mind.
Six months after her posting, Kireri felt like throwing in the towel but something told her to continue.
“There will always be resistance but I believe that as long as everything I am doing is good for me and the prisoner, I go on,” she notes.
For years now, prisoners at the Langata Women’s Prison have enjoyed a beauty pageant organized every year courtesy of Kireri who started all this.
She is proud of many other reforms within the prison system including access by the media to interview prisoners.
Kireri has published a book “The Disruptor” where she highlights her journey as a woman leader in the prison system.