SENATOR Leila de Lima has called on the Senate to look into the extreme problem of congestion as well as the subhuman conditions of the country’s jails and penitentiaries that encouraged the proliferation of illegal activities among the inmates.
De Lima said she hopes that the Senate Justice and Human Rights Committee would give the matter its utmost attention and priority as inmates continue to cramp up the already-populated jails under “unspeakable, uncivilized and inhumane condition.”
“This extreme overcrowding of prisoners in jails breeds a number of severe problems in jail management, including illness and poor hygiene among inmates, substandard sleeping accommodation, lack of food provision, among others,” she said.
Jail congestion, de Lima added, is a steady source of tension and hostility among inmates where most gang wars erupt despite the presence of jail guards who often lack professional trainings.
Last Jan. 10, de Lima sent Senate Justice Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Gordon a letter requesting him to give priority attention to P.S. Res. No. 97 seeking an inquiry in aid of legislation into the current state of jails and penitentiaries all over the country. Attached to the letter is a series of photographs published by the respectable Time Magazine which captured the congestion problem prevailing in the country’s jails and prisons.
“They (inmates) may have transgressed the bounds of laws and rules of our society, but prisoners are still human beings who deserve to enjoy the basic rights to live decently and with dignity,” she said in her resolution.
In 2015, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology alone accounts for 93,961 prisoners, which is 398% congestion rate in all the 461 jails in the country today, while the Bureau of Corrections with 41,144 inmates in its seven prison and penal farms.
At early 2016, the Philippines has been ranked 12th in the world with a prison population of 142,168, based on the World Prison Brief of the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies.
“Such appalling image depicts the deplorable state of jail and penitentiaries where prisoners suffer more severe penalty of horrific and barbaric living condition than the actual penalty that is supposed to be meted out for crimes they have committed,” she said. (pr)
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