The worst fears of our wild magical realist imagination outwitted by brutal matters of fact were realized by recent Bilibid prison events.

It isn't that we fail at imagining the brutalities of prison life. Korean teledramas make sure our imaginative life on what occurs behind prison walls is adequately fed.

Rather, it is that when a suspended prison chief whimsically confesses he's digging the deepest swimming pool inside prison walls for his use and his deep sea diving chums that floors our imaginative reach, days on end.

How could it happen if we could not manage to imagine such uproarious actual facts in Bilibid?

If only for that humbling experience is why we certainly would want the national penitentiary put to rights.

Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra's call for a "total overhaul" of the Bureau of Corrections is thus welcomed mental health news.

"There really needs to be an overhaul. Among others, Congress should consider restoring full control, instead of mere supervision over the BuCor, to the DoJ," said Guevarra, who is also a former Justice Secretary.

By law, Bilibid prisons are jointly under the thumbs of the BuCor and the Justice Department.

The law, in this case, is 2013's BuCor Modernization Law (RA 10575).

Guevarra says BuCor was granted autonomy through that law, with the Justice Department merely tasked to supervise the BuCor but did not control it directly.

To rectify this, Congress would have to do something about the law, Guevarra adds.

It is obvious Guevarra's "full control" proposal is about suspicions that BuCor officials have unbridled power and are sorely tempted to exercise such power unchecked. It's about who guards the guards.
Gauging from recent events involving ranking prison officials such unbridled power is held more likely than not.

In the least — from how suspended BuCor chief Gerald Bantag amply demonstrated in recent weeks which even led Mr. Marcos Jr. to describe events at Bilibid as that of a "fiefdom", unbridled power may have already been exercised.

Scrutinizing the modernization law, however, shows it isn't only about the law being held infirmed insofar as the responsible use of penal power.

It also shows how the law's good intentions had been mangled, for unclear reasons, by not implementing it at all.

Signed into law on 24 May 2013, by former president Benigno Aquino III, the measure hopes to address the root causes plaguing our prisons, particularly Bilibid's palpable congestion which experts says led it to become a safe haven for large-scale criminal activities.

The law aims to decongest Bilibid by authorizing the building of more and more prison facilities all over the country as well as make Bilibid work by hiring more prison guards and employees.

Insofar as what's related to the penal power issue, RA 10575 also intends to make BuCor's penal systems at par with international prison management standards.

Such intention to professionalize prison systems ultimately betrays the fact there is a large problem with the suitability of our present prison officials and employees to their work.

Not so long ago an eminent Filipino scholar of our jail system was thunderstruck by the fact our officials and employees are largely ignorant of proper correctional management.

"They're using words like reformation and rehabilitation but they don't actually know how to reform and rehabilitate the inmates," our scholar said.

It is this glaring fact of ignorance that should tell why there's an abuse of penal power in the first place.

Nonetheless, despite all these good intentions, the law remains largely unimplemented. In fact, three years after the law's passage it still didn't have to implement rules and regulations nor the budget support for its mandated programs, which at one time stood at P2.45 billion a year.

Why that happened is also the other issue that Congress needs answers to.

Email: nevqjr@yahoo.com.ph