When Crime Becomes the Most Accessible Employer

Kitonyi is the firstborn in a family of six in Mathare.

He has just finished Form Four. That alone feels like an achievement. In his home, survival has always come before dreams. His father works at the dumpsite, sorting through waste under the hot sun for whatever little he can earn in a day. His mother sells illicit brew, not because she is proud of it, but because hunger does not wait for legal options. Between them, they manage to keep the family going, barely. Some days there is food. Some days there is not. Some days basic needs are a luxury.

From a young age, Kitonyi has understood what poverty sounds like. It sounds like whispered conversations at night about rent. It sounds like younger siblings asking for things you cannot provide. It sounds like your parents going silent when school fees are mentioned. By the time he finishes Form Four, he already knows something many young people should never have to know: this is likely as far as his education will go.

Not because he is not bright.

Not because he does not want more.

But because wanting and having are two very different things.

So like many young people in places like Mathare, he begins the search for work. He looks everywhere. He asks around. He waits. He hopes. But hope, by itself, does not create jobs. Day after day, nothing comes. No opportunity. No callback. No opening. Just the same hard truth staring back at him: there is no place for him.

Then one day, while getting a haircut at his local barbershop, the barber mentions something that sounds promising. He says he knows someone “in banking” who is looking for a young man like him. Responsible. Young. In need of an opportunity. The kind of chance Kitonyi has been praying for.

They meet.

The man sounds polished, convincing, important. He talks about a “partnership opportunity.” Easy money. Legitimate enough to sound believable, vague enough to avoid too many questions. He asks Kitonyi whether he has an identity card. He tells him to open a bank account. Once the account is opened, he should register a SIM card linked to that account and hand the line over. Profits will come later, he is told. They will share the earnings. It is an opportunity, the man says. A foot in the door. A start.

Kitonyi hears the doubt in his own mind.

He knows something about it does not feel right.

He knows that good things rarely arrive in such strange packaging.

He knows that honest work usually does not require silence, secrecy, or surrendering control of something registered in your own name.

But he also knows something else: this may be the only opportunity that has come his way in months.

And when you are poor, questions can feel dangerous.

When you are desperate, caution can feel expensive.

When this is the only door that opens, even if it leads into darkness, you may still step through it.

So he does what he is told.

He opens the account. Registers the SIM card. Hands it over. Then he waits.

Days become weeks. Weeks become months. No money comes. No explanation. Eventually the calls stop going through. His number is blocked. The man disappears. The “opportunity” vanishes as quickly as it came.

Still, Kitonyi says nothing.

Perhaps because he already suspected the truth.

Perhaps because shame has a way of silencing people.

Perhaps because in communities where survival is never guaranteed, many young people learn to swallow their doubts if there is even the faintest promise of relief.

Then one day, realizing he has lost control of the line, he decides to report the SIM card as missing.

That is when he is arrested.

And just like that, the boy who only wanted a way to survive becomes another young person entangled in the criminal justice system.

It is easy to judge him from a distance.

Easy to ask why he agreed.

Easy to say he should have known better.

Easy to call it greed, foolishness, or carelessness.

But those judgments often come from people who have never known what it means to stand at the edge of hunger with younger siblings behind you. They come from people who have never had to choose between suspicion and survival. They come from people who have options.

Kitonyi’s story is not really about one boy making one bad decision.

It is about what happens when crime becomes the most accessible employer.

It is about what happens when a young person finishes school full of potential and finds nothing waiting on the other side except closed doors, empty pockets, and responsibilities too heavy for his age.

It is about what happens when illegal pathways are more visible, more available, and more immediate than lawful ones.

Because if a young person is offered two things today, one certain but wrong, and one right but endlessly delayed, what do we expect them to choose when there is hunger at home?

If crime offers cash now, while dignity offers only promises for later, what exactly are we asking of them?

And when survival itself becomes urgent, who is really to blame?

The young man trying to keep his family afloat?

Or the society that has made criminal networks, fraud schemes, and exploitative arrangements easier to access than decent work?

We like to tell ourselves that crime is a matter of character. That good people make good choices and bad people make bad ones. But poverty complicates morality in ways that comfort rarely understands. Desperation narrows choices. Hunger reshapes risk. The absence of opportunity does not excuse harm, but it does explain why so many people are pulled toward it.

This is why we cannot talk about youth crime without talking about unemployment.

Why we cannot talk about criminality without talking about inequality.

Why we cannot talk about bad choices without first examining the conditions that make those choices appear necessary.

Young people like Kitonyi are often judged at the moment of arrest, but rarely seen in the months and years before that moment. Rarely seen when they are searching for work. Rarely seen when they are trying to be responsible. Rarely seen when they are quietly losing hope. By the time society notices them, it is often because something has gone wrong.

And that is part of the tragedy.

We meet them too late.

We intervene too late.

We condemn too quickly.

The truth is, many young people in places like Mathare are not choosing crime because they are drawn to it. They are choosing what looks like survival in an environment where lawful survival is constantly out of reach.

So before we judge, perhaps we should ask harder questions.

What opportunities did Kitonyi really have?

What would you choose if your family needed you, if there were no jobs, no safety net, no capital, no connections, and the only thing offered to you was morally questionable but materially immediate?

What kind of society creates conditions where crime feels like employment, and then punishes young people for taking the only work available?

Kitonyi’s story may not unfold exactly this way for every young person. The details change. The names change. The schemes change. But the pattern remains painfully familiar.

A young person leaves school.

Opportunity never comes.

Need grows louder.

A risky path appears.

And society waits at the end of it with handcuffs instead of answers.

Until we create real alternatives, stable livelihoods, dignified work, mentorship, and support for young people at the point where they are most vulnerable, we will keep blaming individuals for failures that are much bigger than them.

If crime is the most accessible employer, then our outrage should not begin with the young person who accepts the offer.

It should begin with the systems that made that offer the most accessible one in the first place.