Can an ordinary person arrest someone? Is mob justice allowed?
Criminal Procedure Code and Penal Code · sources read 4 Oct 2026
A private person may arrest someone they see committing a cognizable offence or reasonably suspect of a felony, and must hand them to a police officer, or take them to the nearest police station, without unnecessary delay. Mob justice is not allowed: everyone has the right not to face violence from public or private sources.
- Where
- The nearest police officer or police station
Steps
- Hand the person to a police officer, or take them to the nearest police station, without unnecessary delay.
- The police decide next: if there is no good reason to believe an offence was committed, the person must be released at once.
- If you or someone else is attacked by a crowd, report it at a police station: everyone is protected from violence by public or private persons.
Watch out
- Force is not a free pass: if someone is charged over force used in an arrest, the court weighs how serious the offence was and the circumstances.
- In a group attack, each person who joined in a common unlawful purpose can be treated as having committed the offence.
- Everyone has the right to life, including a suspected thief.
- Beating a suspect is a crime: common assault carries up to 1 year in jail, assault causing actual bodily harm up to 5 years, and causing grievous (serious) harm up to life imprisonment.
- Killing a suspect is manslaughter, punishable by up to life imprisonment, or murder if done with malice aforethought, for which the Penal Code sets the death sentence.
Who this covers
- Any private person, for cognizable offences committed in their view or felonies they reasonably suspect.
- Property owners, their employees and people they authorise (such as guards), for someone found damaging their property.
Official sources (3)
- Criminal Procedure Code (Cap. 75) new.kenyalaw.org · read 4 Oct 2026
- Penal Code (Cap. 63) new.kenyalaw.org · read 4 Oct 2026
- Constitution of Kenya, 2010 new.kenyalaw.org · read 2 Oct 2026