Helping heal social cleavages

Helping heal social cleavages | Daily Tribune

The last week of October every year should be devoted to celebrating the achievements of our correctional or prison system. This is directed in Presidential Proclamation 10575 signed by the late Fidel V Ramos in March 1995.

However, public attention during October seemed to have been diverted to asking hard questions (again) about our prison system's ability to do the noble tasks mandated to it by law. These mandates may be found in RA 10575 approved in 2013, which strengthened the Bureau of Corrections.

To summarize, the mandate for which the BuCor was created and strengthened is to reform prisoners, more than anything else. But many ask, particularly this month if this has been in any way achieved.

The questions being asked focus on what has happened to the ideals that are supposed to reflect the BuCor. Specifically, why is it that an institution like the National Bilibid Prison, where incarceration is supposed to isolate criminals from doing further harm to society, has instead seemingly become a den of more vicious criminals?

The background of all these of course is the 3 October killing of popular radio and TV journalist and broadcaster Percival Mabasa, better known to many as Percy Lapid, who was shot to death near his home in Las Piñas by a lone gunman who, fearing for his own life, surrendered and identified himself as Joel Escorial.

According to newspaper reports, Escorial claimed a man ordered him to kill Lapid for a fee. The man, he said, was someone detained at the NBP. But before the authorities had gotten to this someone, he had died in his prison cell.

Questions cropped up again and again as to what is happening at the NBP. Why are inmates able to continue committing crimes outside the walls of the NBP? We inevitably think also of the drug problem, which is a big and related worry for prison authorities.

If they were true that they don't only exist but even flourish at NBP, then it is obvious that concerned authorities should change thrust and tactics to end this.

Prisons in general have four essential purposes; they are also the ideals behind them. They are: (a) incapacitation, (b) retribution or punishment, (c) deterrence, and (d) rehabilitation. Each has its own wisdom.

Convicted criminals are isolated from society, so they cannot do more harm; that is incapacitation. The isolation is at the same time their punishment, and that is retribution. The possibility of going to prison is supposed to deter people from committing crimes, although the certainty of getting caught works better as a deterrence.

Rehabilitation is also supposed to turn convicted felons into reformed individuals so that at the end of their prison term they can become productive members of society.

For rehabilitation to be made possible, inmates are taught useful skills. They also get psychiatric and psychological assistance from professionals to change their mental and emotional attitudes and outlook.

We can assume that the NBP and similar institutions of confinement in the country focus on rehabilitation. But it seems their good efforts have not been enough, and much more remains to be done.

We leave it to the concerned authorities to do what they must and not readily condemn them with shouts of incompetence and, worse, unproved charges of conspiring with inmates themselves to engage in many types of criminal business.

Assignment at the BuCor, particularly at the NBP, is one of the toughest jobs in the country today, and in the spirit of Proclamation 10575, we the citizenry can join hands with prison authorities, whenever we can, in making life better for inmates everywhere.

In this way, we can, in the words of the proclamation, "create awareness for public participation in the re-socialization and reintegration of prisoners," and "help heal (the) social cleavages" in our national community.