The National Police Service (NPS) is severely understaffed, with a deficit of more than 200,000 police officers, an audit report has revealed.
The audit by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) shows that the NPS staff shortage has further been fuelled by police exits in the last three years due to non-policing assignments, natural attrition, dismissals and resignations, without replacements.
For instance, the Kenya Police Service had 3,229 exits in the last three years.
"According to the NPS strategic plan 2023/2027, the authorised staff establishment for uniformed officers was 306,590, with post of 106,469 officers at the time of the audit, resulting in a variance of 200,121," reads the audit report in part.
According to the latest Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) data, Kenya Police officers’ population fell from 92,350 in 2023 to 88,483 officers in 2024.
The KNBS data indicates that the sum total of police officers, comprising both the Kenya Police and Administration Police, fell by 3.6 percent from 108,013 in 2023 to 104,080 in 2024.
In the years prior to the drop, there had been an upsurge in security officers such that in 2020, they were numbered at 100, 481 and in 2021 the number was 101, 421 and this hit a peak in 2022,when all security officers numbered were 109, 857.
Within the prisons department, the number of officers fell by 590 to 30,559 in 2024 from 31,149 in 2023.
The trend had been anticipated following the suspension of police recruitment over the last three years, which has put a strain on policing, especially in densely populated urban areas and sparsely populated rural areas covering huge swathes of territory.
The government has not conducted police recruitment for the last three years despite increased security challenges and the deployment of Kenyan officers to conflict-torn Haiti.
However, a bid by the government to recruit more police officers was stopped by a court early this month.
Last week, Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen revealed that the government plans to recruit at least 10,000 police officers in the exercise to bridge the gap.
"With a population of over 55 million Kenyans and only about 104,000 police officers, it becomes almost impossible to have officers in every corner of the country. We must now become innovative in terms of other tools like technology that we could use to keep our country safe," Interior Principal Secretary Raymond Omollo revealed recently during an interview at a local television station.
Inspector-General of Police Douglas Kanja has also admitted a critical shortage of police officers and the looming security threats ahead of the 2027 General Election.
In court filings, IG Kanja has asked the court to lift the suspension of the planned exercise to allow recruitment of additional 10,000 officers.
The audit has further revealed that the NPS suffers a malignant cancer of corruption that begins at the recruitment level, where the majority of slots are handed to wealthy individuals, politicians and top police officers.
The report says corruption runs deep in the police system and whenever recruitment of police constables is announced, cartels, rogue officers collude to divide available places among themselves and offer them to the highest bidders, making the exercise on the fields a mere charade.
This practice, so entrenched in the service leaves only a few positions for Kenyans to win on merit and despite qualifying the entrants are forced to pay hefty bribes, to be recruited into the service.
The audit of the systems, policies, procedures and practices of the NPS, has also unearthed numerous systemic weaknesses, inefficiencies and loopholes that encourage corruption and unethical practices in Kenya's police operations.
The audit conducted by the anti-graft agency between February 10, and June 13, 2025, aims at identifying and sealing corruption loopholes within the police to help enhance service delivery.
The report says while the Constitution expects that police recruitment, especially of police constables, to be transparent, competitive and merit-based to yield the most qualified, professional and ethnically balanced personnel, the current practice is riddled with nepotism, tribalism, favouritism and outright buying of slots.
“The audit established the existence of rampant corruption, cronyism, nepotism, favouritism, tribalism and political influence peddling during police recruitment exercises. Irregularities during recruitment of police constables include failure to follow the laid down regulations and procedures, interference by senior officers and politicians, skewed advertisements designed to favour or discriminate against certain candidates and bribery," says the report.
And those hired through this system remain subservient to the people, who held their hands into the service, while those who landed the opportunities purely on merit are harassed to keep their jobs by having to constantly show favours and bribe their bosses.
"Even the recruitment of police to hire ranks has not been streamlined. In 2021, for instance, serving qualified officers were not allowed to participate in the exercise where about 300cadet officers were recruited and placed into the inspectorate rank. This led to demotivation of serving graduate officers who felt their skills and training were not appropriately recognised or utilised within the service," further says the report.
According to the report, even the recruitment of specialists from the Kenya Police and the Administration Police to serve in key areas within the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) such as forensics cybercrime, and technical units, is done arbitrarily without a defined criterion or structured process, leading to favouritism and corruption.
Also affected is the recruitment of talented men and women in the field of sports and arts, which also lacks a defined criterion, leading to bias, favouritism and corruption in the recruitment process.
The report says endemic corruption also permeates other aspects of the service’s operations as “transfers, deployments, promotions, as well as procurement which are riddled with corruption and favouritism”, and this undermines morale among the police officers.
It emerged that deployments are also at times used as disciplinary measures in contravention of Regulation 9 of the National Police Service Commission (Transfer and Deployment) Regulations 2015.
"It was established that officers were deployed to remote or hardship areas ,on minor cases of disagreements such as by providing a dissenting opinion,to ,or declining sexual advances from their seniors,"reads the report.
Most interviewed officers also indicated that deployments to certain units or areas such as Traffic Unit and others, were based on favouritism driven by close family relations, bribery, nepotism and other similar malpractices.
The audit found that in some instances transfers were made arbitrarily, without the authority of the National Police Service Commission, as required in law.
The law requires an officer to serve in a duty station for a continuous period of atleast one year and a maximum of three years before transfers are effected.
At the same time, the audit established inadequate recognition of long-serving officers.
