Tapal kings or patch work orange

A reporter recently asked Senator Panfilo Lacson “when do you think the (GCTA) investigations will end?” Lacson replied that there’s no way of knowing since more and more people have started to come out to testify or tip off the Senate regarding more anomalies at the state penitentiary and BuCor.

No one seems to have noticed that the senate investigation on the Good Conduct Time Allowance has now shifted or transformed into a full-blown investigation on corruption and criminality inside Bilibid state penitentiary. We are no longer talking about the GCTA law, the IRR, the process and who benefitted rightly or wrongly through the GCTA. What we are now hearing about are various forms of corruption and crimes being committed or conducted inside and from Bilibid. At this point however, I am under the impression that there are more than enough laws to cover any and every anomaly or crime that was discussed during the recent hearings. Forgive my simplistic and maybe ignorant impression, but I think that after everything we’ve heard on TV, it seems that the actual investigation should be conducted by law enforcement agencies such as the NBI, PNP-CIDG, DOJ and Malacañang and that the investigation should translate into criminal charges and not just mini press conferences or sound bytes.

I don’t mean to disparage or belittle the senate investigations but at the rate things are going its all beginning to resemble farmers burning harvested rice fields to draw out the rats and snakes that have taken residence. Following the premise that the investigations are “in aid of legislation,” what other new laws could be written about the same old crimes and forms of corruption that have existed inside Bilibid for decades. I compliment the Senators for flushing out the crooks and exposing their activities, but I worry at the possibility that when controversial discoveries or sound bytes start to disappear, the legislators will all conveniently move on to the next hearing or hot topic and totally abandon the more serious concern for real reforms in the way we think, construct and manage our penitentiaries. These investigations all amount to “tapal” or patchwork repair not institutional reform. The GCTA law was the beginning of reform, an idea to reduce, decongest and compassionately release minimum-security prisoners who have served a big part of their prison sentence and conducted themselves in obedience to policies and procedures.

Yes it was abused and is the reason why we are all crying foul and demanding punishment. But what I fear the most is that the senate investigation might lead to the abolition or removal of the GCTA policy. It is not a far-fetched possibility that the outcome of the senate investigations will be just as worse as the problem: a unilateral shut down at Bilibid. After learning that the Bilibid houses 27,000 prisoners, but was designed for only 7,000 prisoners, I am more convinced that we need to decongest Bilibid. Not only do we need to decongest Bilibid we need to totally change our view regarding imprisonment from vengeance based justice to reformatory justice; punish people while reforming them to become better human beings. If the senate investigations have accomplished anything important, it would be the revelation that the outcasts of our society are not only being penned up like animals, they are also being exploited, used, abused and on occasion killed like mere animals.

All the violations we’ve heard inside the Bilibid regarding televisions, electric fans, cell phones and paid clinical visits, are actually standard equipment provided in prison facilities in other countries. We’ve all seen prisons where they have a common room for television viewing, libraries, recreational rooms, open-air gyms, etc. The idea is to provide prisoners shared basic comforts to stimulate their minds and bodies so that they don’t end up like psychotic dogs that do nothing except go in circles or bark all day. Landline phones or pay phones are provided along hallways and the inmates know that the prison personnel listen in on the conversation. What’s happening inside our prisons is that rules deprive human beings means to communicate with loved ones, we deprive them of gadgets and appliances but end up causing the creation of a corrupt environment that once again works only for the rich and powerful criminals.

How low can we go if even the prison food is turned into pig slop or stolen from by prison officials? Ironically, with 27,000 men and some available land and modern technology, the penitentiary could produce its own food and be partially self sustaining. This leads me to ask; what sort of modern and productive education and training programs are the minimum security prisoners being given or required to undergo in order to make them productive in prison and prepare them for possible job placement upon release? If we actually trained them and passed a “must hire law” for government agencies, then we could actually tell the world that we have reformatory prison programs and management.

My friend Congressman Rufus Rodriguez will be filing a bill for the construction of modern penitentiaries in 13 regions including the NCR, the conversion of the Bilibid grounds into a commercial district, the retention of the main Bilibid center as a museum etc. I hope others will push for penitentiaries that are self sufficient in terms of food production, solar powered, featuring TESDA like facilities, and does not discriminate in terms of literacy and financial status. Patch Work Orange is fixing problems piece by piece but when the whole building is rotten, leaking and broken, you simply replace it with something new. We need a new approach, a modern approach to prison management.

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