EDITORIAL - Will behind the words

There is another development at the New Bilibid Prison and it seems like something out of a crime TV series; the finding of several human remains that were obviously not meant to be found.

Authorities said they dug up several human remains inside a septic tank of the jail’s maximum security compound. They are suspected to belong to several missing inmates, including one who appears to have been beheaded.

This comes at the heels of another recent incident, a fight between rival prison gangs last July 26, where inmates were stabbed and shot.

As to where the gun used in the fight came from remains a mystery. However Bureau of Corrections Chief Gregorio Catapang said he knows that some jail guards knowingly let contraband like weapons into the jail.

Now he wants to correct everything that is wrong with our prison system.

"Yung may culture of negligence, the culture of walang pakialamanan, the culture of delihensiya, the culture of we can get away with it, 'yun ang gusto kong baguhin. And I want to do it in the right manner, in the right attitude," Catapang said.

Catapang’s words sound sweet, but we hope there is a strong will behind them, because that is what it will take to reform a system that is so broken, so riddled with irregularity and corruption. Of course, he isn’t the first BuCor chief to promise such changes. Promises from heads of government agencies involving public security are starting to sound the ones made by politicians before elections.

And the worst of our prisons are more like places run by jail gangs rather than by jail guards. They are places where criminal enterprises, particularly illegal drug, are actually operated from.

As we keep saying, as long as our jails are places where inmates can learn to become better criminals instead of being actually rehabilitated to become contributing members of society, they will not serve the purpose for which they were built.