Due to new administration's strong fight against crime and illegal drugs, it would be expected for the rise in the number of incoming inmates.
Senate Minority Leader Ralph Recto believes that in-order to decongest the prisons in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte should gave parole or pardon the “lonely, old, sick and infirm inmates who have paid their debt to society."
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Releasing the “old, infirm, or gravely- or terminally-ill prisoners,” especially those persons who are not guilty of heinous crimes, was one of the fast solutions to overcome overcrowded prisons, Recto said.
“If Duterte is planning to release so-called ‘political prisoners’ as part of the trust-building steps to clinch a peace deal with Communists, then he must set in motion a process that will grant liberty to prisoners sick of cancer, the aged, the infirm, those who can be freed on humanitarian grounds,” he said in a statement.
Recto said, “It is one record President Digong can easily top. And he must use this power to forgive lonely, old, sick and infirm inmates who have paid their debt to society."
The ideal cell for each inmate is 4.7 square meters but Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) said in a report that the national average is one square meter per person, Recto said.
“There’s a need to find space for them because our standing-room-only prisons are filled to the rafters,”Recto stated.
The BJMP jails are now 375 percent loaded “cells built for 18,881 prisoners now housing 93,961,” Recto said.
The top most congested prisons in BJMP jails are in Malolos City, Bulacan; San Pedro, Laguna; General Trias, Cavite; and the female dormitory of Quezon City Jail has a rate of 2,000 percent.
Like the 575 women prisoners in Quezon City jail are loaded to 129 square meters cell space which made for 27 inmates only and those ranked 4 to 20 on the list of most congested BJMP jails have congestion rates of 1,425 percent to 1,765 percent and the jails in the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) recorded an overcapacity of 158 percent.
However, the New Bilibid Prison, has a 23,749 prisoners for supposedly 8,460 prisoners capacity and it has congestion rate of 181 percent, the Davao Penal Colony, with 6,274 prisoners, has a congestion rate of 265 percent and the Leyte Regional Prison having 1,919 prisoners has 304 percent overcapacity rate this year.
Recto gave warning that the lifestyle conditions in jails and prisons exposes the inmates to hazards like the onset of infectious diseases, high suicide rates and frequent inter-prisoner violence.
Recto stated, “Overcrowding and other problems in the Philippine corrections system could affect the security of the government jail and prison custodians, provide opportunities for acts of corruption, and cause the violation of the normative standards of jail and prison management."
He also said the government should reform the justice system “so that there will be fast trials, minimum court hearing postponements.”
Source: Inquirer