CEBU, Philippines — The Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, which became world-famous for its dancing inmates, has temporarily stopped accepting inmates due to congestion.The new policy took effect last Wednesday.
The management of CPDRC said the facility is no longer capable of accommodating more inmates as it already exceeded its maximum capacity.
CPDRC currently has 3,993 inmates, way above its ideal capacity of 1,500.
In fact, each of the 119 cells is being occupied by over 30 inmates, exceeding the standard 12 to 18 capacity.
The jail management wrote a letter to all justices from different trial courts informing them about it.
CPDRC Warden Reynalod Valmoria said they got positive responses from the courts.
Due to lack of space for new detainees, he said prisoners from the municipal jails will only be detained in police precincts or in municipal or city jails.
“This is part of our decongestion measures,” he said.
Also, he said the management will continue implementing the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) to address overcrowding.
Republic Act 10592 or GCTA law deducts the number of days and years of sentence of a convict once he/she will show good performance and attitude inside the prison.
Moreover, CPDRC will also transfer insular prisoners to either the regional prison camp in Abuyog, Leyte or the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City to serve their sentence.
Valmoria said they are also checking with other city and district jails if they can accommodate inmates from the provincial jail.
With these measures, Valmoria said jail management targets to reduce the number of inmates to at least 2,000.
"Selected na lang ang dawaton. We will make another motion, so that ma-control gyud,” he said. — KBQ (FREEMAN)