Breeding ground for COVID-19

Many of us feel relieved when proven criminals are placed behind bars. But we are aghast when we see online pictures of inmates in Philippine jails. Most of them half naked, they lie on the cemented floor, so congested they look like packed sardines, with hardly any breathing space. Legs are placed on other inmates’ stomachs, heads are plastered on others’ bodies. You just wonder how body intrusions do not compel the owners to revolt and kick and smother the violators.

Decongesting the overcrowded jails all over the country is urgent and pressing. Criminal Policy Research’s World Prison Brief reports that as of 2018, the Philippines was home to 933 prisons with a total prison population of 188,278 inmates. According to the United Nations Standard, each jail inmate should be given at least 4.7 square meters of space and the Philippines has fallen short of the requirement, according to a member of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (SPT). She commented on Jan 7, 2016 that on a visit to Camp Karingal, just a stone’s throw away from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) national office, she saw more than 3,000 pretrial detainees cramped in a facility that was supposed to hold only 800 inmates. “The place was so congested,” she said, “that each inmate just had to find his own space where he can lay down. The stench was intolerable. The lack of ventilation in such a crowded space was suffocating. The number of cases of tuberculosis and other infectious disease is not surprising.”

On the other hand, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has reported that the 467 jails nationwide were at 534 percent of capacity in March this year. The Philippines has the highest jail occupancy rate in the world, according to Human Rights Watch. This is exacerbated by the arrests and temporary detention of thousands of people for violating curfews and quarantine regulations. Reports Human Rights Watch: “This is very dangerous because our jail system is a breeding ground for infectious diseases like the vicious COVID-19 as physical distancing is impossible in a crowded detention center.”

To put this column together, my friend, Dr. Erlinda Nable Senturias, provided me with data she gathered regarding advocacy groups that have been appealing to authorities to release inmates, particularly the sick and elderly.

The groups asking for the release of prisoners, particularly the sick and elderly, are: The Prisoners’ Enhancement and Support Organization (PRESO), The Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform (PEPP), The Prison Fellowship, Ellinwood- Malate Church, The United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). The House of Representatives Justice Committee also expressed the same appeal.

A March 25, 2020 report said the government’s top lawyer – the Solicitor General – acknowledged the congestion in local detention facilities, but, he said, the “situation does not constitute a valid ground for the petitioners’ release.”

“While it is true that some of the detention and reformatory facilities in the country are highly congested, unfortunately, congestion in prison facilities is not among the grounds to release inmates. The issue of the inadequacy of the Philippine Prison System to meet the very high standard of international rules does not warrant the release of the prisoners,” read the OSG’s 47-page comment.

On the contrary, it claimed that the persons deprived of liberty are safer in jails than elsewhere, and enumerated efforts of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology and the Bureau of Corrections “to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all PDLs under their custody in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

If it is any consolation, on May 1, 2020, Mayen Jaymalin of The Philippine STAR wrote that the Supreme Court reduced bail and eased other requirements for poor inmates to decongest jails amid the surge of COVID-19 cases in detention facilities.

According to Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta, the high court released a total of 9,731 inmates from March 17 to April 29. But CJ Peralta noted that the inmates have to be arraigned first before they are released. The legal proceeding is being done online, Peralta said.

This does not satisfy advocates of freedom for the elderly and sick prisoners. The Prisoners’ Enhancement and Support Organization (PRESO) called on President Rodrigo Duterte to declare an extraordinary remedy to free the sick, elderly, and other low-risk inmates to prevent a possible outbreak of the new coronavirus in the Philippines’ notoriously crowded jails. According to Dr. Senturias, Fides Lim whose husband Vic Ladlad was imprisoned in Bicutan in November 2018 based on an alleged planted evidence of firearms, has also been pressing for the immediate release of prisoners with low-level offenses, the elderly, the sick, and the pregnant who are most at risk for severe disease or death if infected with the coronavirus, as well as those already due for parole, and those due for release, which was interrupted by quarantine regulation.

The Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform (PEPP) has been visiting political detainees in Camp Crame and in Bicutan. Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, chair of PEPP, told Dr. Senturias that in Bicutan he saw the need for calling on the immediate release of political detainees and the elderly and sick among the other prisoners particularly in the light of COVID-19.

PEPP, a federation of church organizations composed of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the National Council of Churches in the Philippines (NCCP), the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC), the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP) and the Ecumenical Bishops Forum (EBF) expressed concern over the people who languish in jails and are vulnerable to COVID infection.

PEPP included in its appeal dated April 18, 2020, the release of NDFP consultants. PEPP stands by its longstanding offer to enable and facilitate a conducive atmosphere for restarting the peace talks by providing custodial guarantee through the church network of PEPP should the process of Release on Recognizance (ROR) be followed in relation to detained consultants of the NDFP.

The Prison Fellowship on the other hand calls on Christians to pursue the prison ministry citing Matthew 25:36, 40 “I was in prison and you came to visit me … I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” However, Rev. Callum R. Tabada, administrative pastor of UCCP Cosmopolitan Church and an active member of the Prisoner Fellowship International Pilipinas, expressed concern that since COVID-19, the prison ministry has stopped. He used to visit the Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong upon request by women from Dumaguete City who were transferred there.

Ellinwood-Malate Church has a prison ministry in Bicutan but because of COVID-19 this was also stopped temporarily, according to Rev. Cesar Diumano, a member of the ministerial team. This is the same situation in the Diocese in Cagayan de Oro City according to Archbishop Antonio Ledesma. Pastor Alvaro O. Senturias Jr. said the prison ministry in UCCP Paradahan in Tanza, Cavite has been stopped by government authorities because of the jail break in Imus, Cavite.

The House of Representatives Justice Committee has also recommended the temporary release on bail of low-level offenders, sick and elderly prisoners in a document signed by committee chairperson, Rep. Vicente Veloso III of the Third District Representative of Leyte.

The Bureau of Correction spokesperson Gabriel Chaclag reported that nine persons in Bilibid and 14 at the Correctional Institute for Women fall under the Suspect category for COVID-19.

A male inmate from New Bilibid Prison (NBP) has died due to COVID-19 infection on April 23, the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) confirmed. That inmate was also the First COVID-19 case in the national penitentiary sent to the research Institute for Tropical Medicine a week before his death.

The United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) joins in the broadening appeal to Philippine government leaders to make “a timely, just, and compassionate action to free the most vulnerable prisoners amidst the continuing threat of COVID-19.”

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