General summary of Kenya Criminal law

Kenya criminal lawis the body ofnational law relating to crime in Kenya. Broadly speaking, it defines as criminal such human conduct as threatens, harms or endangers the safety and welfare of people. It also sets out the punishment to be imposed on persons who engage in such conduct, provided they have criminal capacity and act unlawfully and with a guilty mind.In the definition of Van der Waltet al, a crimeis "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted."Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.Criminal law (which is to be distinguished from its civil counterpart) forms part of the public law of Kenya, as well as of the substantive law (as opposed to the procedural). In Kenya, as in most adversarial legal systems, the standard of evidence required to validate a criminal conviction is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The sources of Kenya criminal law are to be found in the common law, in case law and in legislation.