Since the end of the 1980s, Sweden's penal system is based on a model of "just deserts". The perceived gravity of the offense or the penal value is the most important factor in the decision of an appropriate sanction for the crime.

The development of penal law aims to reduce the use of shorter prison sentences by finding alternatives that don't entail the deprivation of a person's liberty. In the Prison Treatment Act of 1974, Sweden has, as the primary goal of the prison sentence, to promote the inmate's adjustment to the community and to counteract the detrimental effects of imprisonment.

The Philippine prison system proves the worst of possible worlds even compounded by pre-trial detention in our judicial system.Prisoners serve time that outweighs their crimes; on average they are detained for nine months without being sentenced; a phenomenal 75 percent of incarcerations are pre-trial (i.e. 141,422 of 188,278 prisoners, per 2018 data).

Adding insult to injury, about 200 inmates die annually at the New Bilibid Prison.

The high rate of deaths is due to overcrowding, dirty or poor living conditions, and inmate violence. These contribute to an outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis. Due to the lack of nutritional food and basic healthcare, at least one prisoner dies at NBP each day.

The Swedish prison system is the best in the world. The correctional system's operations demonstrate a humane attitude, good care of and active influence upon the prisoner, observing a high degree of security as well as by due reference to the prisoner's integrity and to due process.

Its operations are directed towards measures that influence the prisoner not to commit further crimes.Predominantly, the objective is to promote and maintain the humane treatment of offenders without jeopardizing security.

Under the Swedish system, here are the prisoners' rights consistent with a rights-based approach to social development, viz: (1) contacts with the outside world; (2) education; (3) prison labor; (4) leisure activities; (5) religion and faith; (6) medical treatment of prisoners; (7) medical treatment of drug addicts; and (8) treatment programs.

Obliquely, America is a pioneer in the "punishment industry" with total US corrections budget of $10 billion a year. This is for 5,000 institutions for holding adults in custody; 33,000 local and county jails; 700 state prisons, work farms, and other secure facilities; and several hundred halfway houses, federal prisons, and detention centers for illegal aliens. Its rate of recidivism is pegged at 50 percent, and it costs the government $25 to $31 per inmate per day.

In an agency study by our own Supreme Court, homegrown realities contribute to the prison problem. First, 70 percent of cases that clog court dockets are drug-related. Couldn't there be a serious wrong with RA 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002? Second, 53 percent of the male and 60 percent of the female inmates in the national prisons don't know their rights against involuntary admission. Undereducated, they have reached only high school with most mere elementary graduates.

A shift to a humanistic approach to punishment becomes imperative. Essentially, if law enforcement is wicked, it triggers a chain reaction from start to end, and its effect cascades to all the integral links of the criminal justice system.

We're better off with the least possible population in Philippine prisons. One study even proves that the private management of prisons could lead to costs that are 10 to 25 percent below those of "public corrections bureaucracies" — symptomatic of government failure and axiomatic of large-scale corruption.

Theoretically enough, the food provision of 28,545 inmates at the NBP alone costs the government P1,712,700 per day; P51,381,000 per month; P616,572,000 in a year. Assume they all serve time for 10 years, which translates into P6,165,720,000 of taxpayers' money that readily qualifies our "prison republic" as the biggest welfare program subsidized for the longest time.

With a P10 billion annual subsidy for all jails, prisons, and penitentiaries of over 200,000 inmates — their catering services, corrupt prison staff, and other 'service providers' — eventually, form (multi) millionaires' clubs siphoning off vast public funds.