Congested jails for

Congested jails for | Daily Tribune

Grossly insensitive is local governments boss Jonvic Remulla’s intention to detain suspected flood control thieves in a spanking new jail.

Remulla last week proudly showed off the newly built city jail in Payatas, Quezon City near the Sandiganbayan, which he said would house suspected flood control thieves.

Noted Filipino criminologist Raymund E. Narag says the new Payatas jail “is no small facility… meant to be the most modern jail in the Philippines, a symbol of what correctional reform could be if we dared dream beyond overcrowding and neglect.”

The old Payatas jail, meanwhile, is a substandard jail, with bad fences, clogged toilets and drainage that make it generally unlivable for detainees, says Narag.

Should the expected charges against the thieves be filed in the graft court, Remulla described the new jail as the “most convenient” for bringing them back and forth to the Sandiganbayan. Remulla expects at least 200 people will be indicted in the next three weeks.

Looking spartan enough with its double-deck bunks and cheap mattresses, the jail isn’t particularly infuriating in the way it was physically presented by Remulla.

By Philippine congested jail standards, in fact, the jail is clean and comfortable and the suspected flood control thieves presumably would welcome detention there. A point not lost on Remulla when he told reporters that those indicted could “petition where they want to be detained.”

At this point, however, we should violently grab Remulla by the shoulders and pointedly ask him: “Are you seriously daft?”

Which is exactly what human rights group Kapatid did when it slammed Remulla’s silly statements, which they found “not only blatantly illegal but (also) a callous insult that trivialized the severity of corruption.”

Kapatid says Remulla’s suggestion is illegal since the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology Manual mandate that detainees be housed “subject to court orders.”

What that means is that wherever the graft court decides to detain someone, “the detention is based on proximity, not convenience or personal choice,” says Kapatid.

Nothing would prevent the graft court therefore from packing off someone indicted for flood control thievery to another nearby jail like the notoriously congested old Quezon City jail in Kamuning. The Kamuning jail houses 3,184 PDLs and has a congestion rate of 1,066 percent, way off livable prison standards.

Notwithstanding that, the graft court can of course jail the suspected thieves in the less-harsh old Payatas jail; though if the thieves were to be detained there, it would be poetic justice, says Narag.

“They (the thieves) will, at last, know how it feels to suffer the consequences of their handiwork. Let them experience what they built–-to live amid crumbling walls, leaking pipes and failing systems,” says Narag.

Still, Kapatid makes a strong, valid point about Remulla sending a “dangerous signal” that the wealthy and influential may buy comfort while the poor and the rest of us are denied imprisonment rights.

“What kind of justice system allows those accused of stealing billions to choose their place of detention while (others) are left to rot in congested, filthy and inhumane conditions, denied even the most basic rights?” asked Kapatid’s Fides Lim.

That’s actually a subtle way of saying that immediate detention inside congested jails is yet the best practical move for satisfying demands that suspected flood control thieves face early quick justice and punishment.