Nairobi — A new head of the Prisons Service should be appointed from outside the force to spearhead radical reforms, a probe team has recommended.

This will bring in fresh thinking in the management of the country's correctional services.

The 14-member committee also recommended that the Prisons Council, which is mandated by law to hear grievances from officers, should be revived. Some of the changes will require President Kibaki's intervention to implement while others can be carried out by the office of the Vice President.

The report, whose contents were initially published by the Daily Nation, was officially presented to Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka on Wednesday.

The committee wants the Government to replicate the action it took at the Police Department, where Maj General Hussein Ali was picked from the army to head it.

"The Prisons Department urgently needs a change in leadership to carry out radical changes in institutional attitudes to root out strongly embedded practices such as corruption," the report says.

In response, Mr Musyoka said some of the changes needed would, however, require Cabinet and Parliamentary approval.

The report recommended that the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission should immediately institute investigations over allegations of corruption.

Dismissed

Commissioner of Prisons Gilbert Omondi has since dismissed the report as full of generalisations.

In a past interview with the Nation, Mr Omondi said although the department had not achieved 100 per cent in its objectives, it had tried its best to address ills of past management.