EDITORIAL-Cellphones in jails

If a recently-arrested drug suspect is to be believed, some Cebu City Jail personnel are allowing some inmates to have cellphones.

The suspect said some jail personnel not only charge P50,000 to P60,000 to let a cellphone in; they also help hide them whenever jails are searched high and low for contraband.

Helping them get cellphones, which are prohibited by law inside prisons, is already damning enough, helping them get away with keeping those gadgets is even worse.

Confident that they have nothing to hide, Cebu City Jail officials have welcomed any investigation into the claims.

Let’s give the jail officials the benefit of the doubt and assume regularity, that there aren’t cellphones in the Cebu City Jail, or that if there are the jail personnel aren’t helping smuggle them in.

However, we have also long suspected that some inmates are able to operate their drug empire with the help of such gadgets, and that nothing really comes in or out of that prison without the knowledge of jail officials --if you get our drift.

And there seems to be no shortage of reports from arrested drug suspects that they sourced their drugs from jail. Of course, not just the Cebu City Jail, but also other jails all over country.

If it is proven that some jail personnel are helping prisoners smuggle and keep cellphones --meaning they are involved in committing a crime-- then there must be hell to pay.

During a previous editorial last November we said it isn’t time to hike the pay of jail officials, as proposed by a senator. Not until they prove themselves worthy of it.

This development isn’t exactly headed in that direction.