Death without Penalty 
By: Raymund Narag
Inmates are dying in our city jails in an alarming
rate. They are succumbing to boils, tuberculosis, chicken pox and other
highly communicable diseases. Just in the Quezon City Jail alone, there
are five recorded deaths per month. And in the Metro Manila city jails,
there were 55 recorded deaths from January to June of this year. This is
even worse than the death row.
The sadder fact is: they are dying without being meted out a sentence.
The inmates in the jails are under going trial and the court is still
determining their culpability to the crimes charged against them. They
are still presumed innocent yet they are meted death.
The number one cause of this alarming mortality is over congestion of
the jails. Since the passage of the New Anti-Drugs Law of 2002, where
the threshold of the non-bailable offense was made lower, almost all the
jails have doubled in their population. The Quezon City Jail, for
example, has grown from 1,800 inmates in June 2002 to a whooping 3,200
in just two years. And the total Bureau of Jail Management and Penology
population is growing at an annual rate of 13%. It is expected that, by
the end of the year, the population will reach 3500 inmates in Quezon
City Jail, even if it is only designed to cater to the needs of 700
inmates. That will be 500% congestion rate.
This drastic increase in the inmate population, sad to say, never
translated to additional facilities. In fact, the budgetary allocation
for the whole year did not anticipate the sudden surge. At least 5,000
inmates nationwide are not included in the food payroll.
And most of the jails can not come up with segregation scheme due to
lack of space. As such, the sick and the healthy mingle with each other.
They share the same sleeping quarters, that is, the cold floor. And when
they take their food, they have to be sharing eating utensils. For even
spoons and forks cannot be provided by the government. That is why,
tuberculosis is come one, come all.
Coupled to these is the lack of basic services. The food allocation is a
measly P35 per day per inmate. This is not even enough to buy a Jollibee
Hamburger. Also, the inmates are not provided with clothing provisions.
They have to look for their own mats and blankets. They have to fend for
themselves when they are thrown in the dark dungeons.
And when they become ill, they would simply be given paper
prescriptions, for chances are, the infirmary had run out of medicines.
The medicine budget per inmate per year is pegged only at P106.64. And
though it is ideal that one doctor must be present in every 1000
inmates, in the National Capital Region, there are only eight medical
doctors attending to the needs of 25,000 inmates.
This pathetic condition had driven some of the inmates out of their wits
or in jail parlance buryong. Their mental and emotional health is
compromised making the jail a constant arena of conflict. Many inmates
try to escape from the hellhole, risking their lives. That is why, the
jail management has become even more strict and punitive in order to
meet the growing restlessness.
And when the inmates successfully executed their escapes, the lowly jail
guards are charged with neglect of duty. They are made to pay for a
structural problem that is beyond their personal capacities to solve. As
such, some jail officers have low morale; their initiative waning.
Eventually, there are inmates who could no longer bear the situation and
would simply profess guilt just so they would be transferred to other
jails. As an old inmate had said, it is better to be given a death
sentence and be transferred to the death row; at least, his case will be
reviewed by the higher courts and he may have the chance to be
acquitted. In jail, he will surely die of manas or the swelling of his
body, due to lack of exercise. For all its irony, the purgatory is even
worse than the hell.
This pitiable situation is made even more revolting by the fact that the
average stay of inmates in jail is 3.2 years, thanks to the delays in
the court hearings. A hearing is set only once in two months, only to be
postponed because of the absence of witnesses and lack of material time.
There are even some inmates who continue to languish in jail for the
past eleven years and are still awaiting promulgation. This is a gross
violation of the right of the inmates to speedy trial.
And then, when promulgation comes, only 18% of those charged will be
declared as guilty by the courts. The others will be pronounced as
innocent or dismissed or archived, thanks to the police inefficiency in
data gathering. For all intents and purposes, the inmates had suffered
tremendously, yet they are found not guilty. They may have their freedom
back, but they already have a life destroyed.
And the cycle of crime evolves. For when the inmates are in jail, they
have been fully acculturated to an ethos of hate. And the weaker of them
imbibe the culture of violence. Crime becomes a means of livelihood, and
jails are but vacation houses. As such, 30 percent of the inmates
immediately come back within two months upon release. They have a
wretched life outside and life inside is no different.
There is an alarming rate with which we are killing our own people, our
own kind. For the people in jail are the same ordinary Filipino poor and
uneducated The mere fact that 82% will be found not guilty is enough
proof that jails are not for the real criminals but for the powerless.
As the jail saying puts it all, "Ang kulungan ay di para sa taong
makasalanan, kundi para sa mga kapos ang kapalaran. "
Perhaps we could do something about it, all of us who care. For to
punish those who may have erred our society the wrong way, to punish
them by default, may turn out to be a graver injustice, if they will be
found innocent. And then the cycle of crime continues, and we shall all
be having deaths without penalties.
Raymund E. Narag is the author of the book entitled "Freedom and
Death Inside the City Jail" which was commissioned by the Supreme Court
and the United Nations Development Program. He languished in jail for
seven years for a crime he did not commit. Eventually, he was declared
innocent by the Regional Trial Court. He is presently the Program
Officer of the Humanitarian Legal Assistance Foundation He can be
reached at 'raymund.narag@up.edu.ph'.
