What probation is and how long it lasts
Probation of Offenders Act and Probation and Aftercare Service · sources read 4 Oct 2026
Instead of sending you to jail, a court can place you on probation: you live in the community under a probation officer's supervision. A probation order lasts at least 6 months and at most 3 years, and breaking it can mean being sentenced for the original offence.
- Where
- The court handling the case decides. Probation officers work from Probation and Aftercare Service offices countrywide (headquarters: Reinsurance Plaza, Taifa Road, Nairobi).
Steps
- Before making a probation order, the court sends a probation officer to look into the case and your circumstances and write a pre-sentence report. Give them true and full information.
- If you are placed on probation, the court must explain the order to you in plain language, including what happens if you break it.
- Report to your probation officer once a month, or as often as they require, and follow the conditions of the order.
- Tell your probation officer immediately if you change your job or where you live.
- When you finish, the Probation and Aftercare Service issues a Certificate of Completion. Its services are free.
Watch out
- The court can make a probation order with or without first recording a conviction against you.
- The court may take into account the victim's views, as recorded in the pre-sentence report.
- If you break the conditions, the court can sentence you for the original offence as if you had just been convicted of it.
- Being convicted of a new offence committed while on probation lets the court that made the order sentence you for the original offence too.
- Besides supervision, the order can set conditions on where you live and other matters the court thinks necessary to keep you from reoffending.
- If you were convicted and then put on probation, that conviction is disregarded for laws that disqualify or restrict convicted people.
- That protection ends if you are later sentenced for the original offence: you are then treated as convicted on the date of sentence.
Who this covers
- Anyone charged in court with an offence can be considered, but not every offender is found suitable.
Official sources (4)
- Probation of Offenders Act (Cap. 64) new.kenyalaw.org · read 2 Oct 2026
- Probation and Aftercare Service Brochure probation.go.ke · read 2 Oct 2026
- Probation Orders Programme Pamphlet probation.go.ke · read 2 Oct 2026
- Probation of Offenders Act (Cap. 64), Revised Edition 2012 probation.go.ke · read 4 Oct 2026