Murders most foul had once again thrown the spotlight on the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City where this Contrarian swapped tales once with convicts serving sentences inside its maximum security compound early on in the Duterte administration.
If I'm still familiar with the Bureau of Corrections' office inside the NBP, it was because it was where we — fellow journalists Elmer Manuel and Arman Carandang — processed the paperwork to be allowed in for the interviews with those mostly serving life sentences.
"Why do you want to be inside where you could end up dead in mere seconds before the guards can come to your aid," snapped the BuCor functionary, obviously irked that somebody whose pay grade was way higher than his, had greenlighted our "trip."
And so with the BuCor exec's signature and our own on waivers, we were allowed inside NBP's maximum security compound, gate after gate, passing through one degree short of a body cavity search by members of the Philippine National Police-Special Action Force who were ordered by the President to relieve the BuCor guards.
How's that for a clue why the regular guards could not save us or why they would even want to? How about the PNP-SAF members serving as sentries?
Somehow we got the impression that they were not amused being saddled with three unwanted visitors when even the relatives of those serving time at NBP were denied visits by relatives.
Worse, withdrawn conjugal privileges had put those inside the NBP on tenterhooks, highly strung, we were told.
'Twas really not a good time to be interviewing people inside the NBP amid charges that corrupt prison officials and guards had allowed syndicate lords to control the drug trade outside its walls via remote control via smartphones, etc.
Still, the interviews turned out fine as everyone had stories to tell and was eager to tell them. As for us three, we came in at NBP without the benefit of a commitment order from a court, and we also came out without release documentation.
The NBP minarets, coming in or going out, would give anyone the chills, that much I can still remember.
Life inside the NBP, according to someone who was sentenced to life imprisonment but who was eventually acquitted by the Supreme Court after an eternity, was all business.
"Everything is for sale, every good and every service, and money is not always the currency of reckoning," the former NBP inmate told this Contrarian. "Those with brains who come into Bilibid, they're high up the pecking order."
"A convicted lawyer, a doctor, or even a journalist like you, they are valued for what they can do for the gang bosses and even for those considered as the lowest mammals, like the rapists," he continued.
True enough, in raids after raids at the NBP through the years, luxury items (how do you call a can of Red Horse for P1,000 a pop of its lid but that?) had been seized from inmates, including blow-up sex dolls, along with the implements — the tools of death — to allow one to enjoy living.
"Where people have little hope of coming out serving several life sentences, killing to stay alive is nothing. What's one more life taken when the most important is to preserve yours?"
"There are rules, an honor system even, inside the prison as it's not acceptable to be always fighting, although hardly anyone would think twice fighting to the death as needed," the former NBP "resident," said.
"You'll never know what you are capable of until you are faced with needing to actually do it," he added. "Even for those who had been wrongly accused, it's easy to assimilate into anyone's system the need to survive."
