Community service instead of jail for minor offenses – Gordon

The Manila Bulletin | February 5, 2019

Senator Richard J. Gordon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, has
recommended community service instead of a jail term for minor offenses.

In his Senate Bill 2195 contained in Committee Report 621, Gordon said the measure could help address
jail decongestion nationwide.

SB 2195 is in substitution of Senate Bills 590, 1448 and 1452 filed by Senators Antonio “Sonny” Trillanes
IV, Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, Joseph Victor ‘’JV’’ Ejercito and Gordon.

Gordon said the community service envisioned in his measure consists of any action or physical activity,
which inculcates civic consciousness intended toward the improvement of public work or promotion of
public service.

SB 2195, or “Community Service Act,” seeks to decongest the current jampacked Philippine jails and
promote restorative justice by authorizing the court to require community service in lieu of jail sentence
for offenses punishable by ‘’arresto menor’’ and ‘’arresto mayor.’’

Under the Revised Penal Code (RPC), the jail term of arresto mayor is one month and one day to six
months, while arresto menor is one day to 30 days.

Gordon said the proposed legislation is timely considering the current jail congestion rate of the
Philippines at 436 percent, “making it the world’s second highest most overcrowded prison in the world,
next to Haiti.”

Haiti’s prison system is overcrowded by 454.4 percent, he pointed out.

The top five most congested prisons in the country are Region 4A (975 percent), Region 3 (802 percent),
Region 9 (789 percent), Region 7 (775 percent) and Region 1 (674 percent).

Overcrowded PH jails housing over 146,000 inmates, above 20k capacity: COA
ABS-CBN News | July 03, 2018

The Commission on Audit flagged the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) for the
worsening condition inside jails across the country.

In its 2017 report, COA said occupancy rate in prison facilities in the country have reached 612%, with a
total jail population of 146,302 inmates, far too high for the 20,653 capacity.

“The jail populations for the rear recorded an increase in various months due to the number of drug-
related cases in the country as well as the court’s slow action or inaction on the pending cases,” COA
said.

Region 4-A (Calabarzon) has the most overcrowded jails in the country, followed by Region 3 (Central
Luzon) and Region 9 (Zamboanga Peninsula).

This kind of congrestion violates the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of
Prisoners and the BJMP Manual on Habitat, Water, Sanitation and Kitchen in Jails, the government
agency stressed.

COA also found out that there is an increase in the inmates catching illnesses in the past 3 years, with
the government recording 57,269 cases of upper respiratory tract infection in 2017, around 15,000 more
than what was recorded in 2016.

The report also noted an increasing number of inmates having hypertension and abscess in the past 3
years.

“Congestion in jails lead not only to health and sanitation problems but also to increased gang affiliation
of inmates. To sustain survival, inmates hold on to gangs or 'pangkat' where they find protection,
network of social support and most importantly, access to material benefits,” COA said.

COA noted that the regional offices of the BJMP are already taking steps to address the conditions in
jails, such as strengthening of para-legal programs to address congestion problems. Additional jails are
also being built across the country, it added.
CONGESTION

BJMP Director for Operations J/Supt. Noel Pimentel Montalvo earlier confirmed Philippine jails, many of
which house more than 5 times their capacity, do not meet United Nations standards.

Each jail inmate should be given at least 4.7 square meters of space, according to the UN.

Under this standard, only 21,342 inmates could be accommodated in Philippine jails, which have a total
floor space of 100,315 sqm, he said.

An earlier report said congestion in jails worsened amid President Rodrigo Duterte's intensified
campaign against crime, particularly illegal drugs.

Duterte in 2017 expressed satisfaction with the condition of jails run by BJMP despite widespread
congestion.

He said budget constraints then bar the improvement of jails. He instead promised inmates that he
would place a television in each cell to improve their living conditions.

The BJMP is in charge of all city, district and municipal jails. It handles detainees "accused before a court
who are temporarily confined in such jails while undergoing investigation, waiting final judgement and
those who are serving sentence promulgated by the court 3 years and below."

State of the PH in 2018: Our jails are now world’s most congested
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism | July 23, 2018
by Dr Raymund Narag, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Southern
Illinois University

A HUMANITARIAN crisis is facing the Philippine corrections. The Philippine National Police (PNP)
detention centers, the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) and provincial jails, and the
Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) prisons are not only full to the brim, they are teeming with emaciated and
disease-carrying bodies.

On June 30, 2016, upon assumption of Rodrigo Duterte as President of the country, the BJMP population
stood at 96,000 inmates or Persons Deprived of Liberties (PDLs). Now, two years and three State of the
Nation Addresses (SONA) after, the BJMP population stands at 160,000 PDLs. That is a staggering growth
of 64 percent in two years.

That population does not include the 30-percent increase in BuCor prisons, and the unquantifiable
growth in PNP detention cells and provincial jails where data are scantly collected and tallied.

We are now officially the most overcrowded correctional facilities in the whole world: our 605-percent
congestion rate is far ahead of Haiti’s 320 percent, the second most crowded.

In some jails, it is even worse: the Quezon City Jail Male Dorm has a rated bed capacity of 286; it now
has 3,911 inmates, meaning it is over-congested by 1,000 percent, even after many other PDLs had
already been transferred to the Quezon City Jail Annex in Bicutan, Taguig.

Other jails have recorded 3,000-percent over-congestion. With the current rate in which the police are
arresting drug users and tambays, the population growth will continue to rise.

This humanitarian crisis has taken a massive toll on the physical and mental health of the PDLs.

In the Quezon City Jail Male Dorm alone, around three to five inmates die every month due to simple
and easy-to-treat diseases like manas (swelling), rumbu-rumbu (skin diseases), as well as heart attack —
all because of lack of ventilation and lack of access to medical care.

In the whole Metro Manila, around 40 PDLs die every month in the different BJMP jails.

Unrecorded tragedies

Death rates are worse in PNP detention centers, though most of these go unrecorded. Most PNP cells
are single detention cells where 50 to 100 PDLs are cramped in cells designed for four to six people;
additionally, PNP does not have a budget for food and medicines for detainees, unlike the BJMP and the
BuCor, both of which have a budget of PhP60 per day per inmate for food.
Last week, a flesh-eating skin disease struck the Manila Police District Station 9 and killed a PDL shortly
after he was transferred to the Manila City Jail Male Dormitory. The crowding also leads to violence
among inmates causing the death of Genesis ‘Tisoy’ Argoncillo, a tambay arrestee, in the hands of two
veteran inmates.

Aside from the deaths, a number of inmates have acquired highly communicable diseases, such as
tuberculosis, red eyes, and small pox in the detention and jail facilities due to the face-to-face proximity.

The Department of Health (DOH) should be alerted of the many new cases of communicable diseases
acquired by PDLs that could be transmitted to many others once the PDLs are released. The DOH should
declare a state of calamity in the local detention centers and jails.

De facto punishment

The sudden growth of the PDL population has also overwhelmed our criminal-justice system. The
number of the local courts, judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers has mostly remained stagnant. As
such, despite the best efforts of the Supreme Court to speed up the disposition of cases, criminal-trial
proceedings still flow slowly.

Innovations in the judiciary aimed at speeding up the process have included the Continuous Trial, where
judges are instructed to conduct marathon hearings, and the Task Force Katarungan and Kalayaan
(TFKK), where BJMP paralegal officers identify Detainees of Interest (DOI) or detainees who have
exceeded three years of stay in Regional Trial Courts (RTC) and six months in Metropolitan Trial Courts
(MTC) and alert their respective judges. And yet data from the BJMP Jails show that, on average, PDLs
stay in jail for 372 days from time of detention until disposition.

Around 20 percent of the PDLs have stayed in jail for at least two years. Some inmates stay in jail for
more than 18 years, only to be acquitted. Ironically, it takes longer to be acquitted than to be convicted.
This suggests that time in detention has become a de facto mechanism to punish PDLs.

One inmate in Bohol District Jail has so far spent 15 years in jail, 10 years of which went by without his
having a trial. As of this writing, that inmate is still undergoing trial and presumed innocent.

Court actors are also suffering the consequences of the sudden PDL population growth and should not
be blamed for the delay of cases. Despite their best efforts, they are in a bind.

Interviews with judges suggest that they, too, are physically suffering from their heavy caseloads. In
urban areas, judges can be handling as many as 2,000 to 3,000 criminal cases at a time. This number
does not include civil and administrative cases filed in their salas. Two judges also share one prosecutor
and one public defender. Worse, they can be assigned in multiple jurisdictions.

Deepened distrust

Judges work triple time just to keep their caseloads manageable. They schedule 20 to 30 trials a day,
spending their weekends writing decisions, compromising their social, physical, and mental health.
Many judges, prosecutors, and public defenders also get promoted or transferred while hearing cases,
while others resign or die before the cases are done. Any change in personnel easily translates to six
months to one year of delay for the inmates.

The delay in cases has deepened the distrust in the criminal justice system. As a coping mechanism, PDLs
try to shorten the hearings, find ways to elude the system, exploit opportunities to bribe police,
prosecutors, and judges, and pay off guards.

Interviews with PDLs suggest that they want to undergo the whole trial proceedings squarely; yet, they
also know that they are already punished even if they are not yet found guilty. Worse, legal and
extralegal opportunities are usually acquired by PDLs with resources, thus furthering the belief that is it
only the poor that are carrying the brunt of the inequities of the justice system.

Broken justice system

For most people unaware of its dynamics, case delay is a manifestation of a broken justice system,
which furthers their legal cynicism. Thus, the following narratives have been socially accepted: it is okay
to kill criminals and drug users if they are caught in the act, if they are given a warning and did not
change, if caught numerous times, and if they will simply evade arrest and conviction. These public
sentiments also justify lengthy detention in horrible, humanitarian-crisis conditions. The President
himself has articulated it: let them suffer in detention centers, jails, and prisons.
Unnoticed in the public support for massive incarceration is the financial toll to the society. While the
budget per inmate is pitiful, when aggregated, it still drains our limited resources.

The budget per inmate per year is PhP74,000, which is double the tuition of students in public colleges
and three times the budget in elementary and secondary education.

With the conservative estimated increase of 100,000 inmates from detention centers, jails, and prisons
for the past two years, the government spent PhP2.9 billion for food alone. That does not include the
operational cost to run the facilities and the lost economic contribution of the detained workforce,
which is way higher.

Social, financial toll

What has led to this humanitarian crisis?

It is the President’s belief that the detention centers, jails, and prisons should be as difficult as they can
be to serve as a deterrent to future criminals, drug dealers, and users. He believes that by sending them
to jails and prisons, they will learn from their mistakes and make amends. And for the incorrigible, those
who continue to use drugs despite repeated warnings, and those who they resist arrest and fight the
police, the President has repeatedly encouraged the law enforcement to use deadly force.

The President’s underlying and unstated policy, usually incoherently mumbled in different speeches is: I
am going to protect my beloved country at all costs. As he has curtly, and repeatedly, stated: If you
destroy my country, I will kill you.

Two years on, has such a policy made a dent? Are all the arrests and deaths, the social and financial
costs associated with the war on drugs worth it? Have we become more peaceful? Are the horrible
inhuman facilities deterrent to crime?

For a punishment to be an effective deterrent, it must be swift, severe, and certain. The offender should
understand that the punishment is intended for him or her. It means that for the horrible inhumane
detention in jail and prison facilities to be a deterrent, it must be imposed swiftly, severely, and with
certainty. The offender should also understand that the horrible inhumane facility is intended for him or
her. If not, then all of these massive arrests and killings will not make a difference. It will simply drain
our country’s human resources without changing the root causes of the problems.

Interviews with PDLs suggest that this is the case. From their perspective, it is not a deterrent to
whatever behavior or act it was that got them into trouble. When asked if they voted for Duterte during
the presidential elections or if they support him upon winning, they overwhelmingly report yes. Most
PDLs say they voted and support him because of his staunch action against drugs. They say that they
concur to the notion that drug users deserved to be killed.

When asked what brought them to jail, 75 percent point to drugs. But while many admit to being drug
users, all claim that when the police arrested them, whatever evidence was used against them was
planted.

When asked why they continue to use drugs when so many have already been killed and arrested, they
say, “Hindi naman kami ‘yung addict na sinasabi niya.” Or, “Paminsan-minsan lang naman kaming
gumagamit.” Or, “Gumagamit lang kami para suportahan ang trabaho.”

In their mind, the message is not for them; it is for someone else – “Sa iba ‘yun!” The President’s
technique of othering — “basta’t hindi ka addict, safe ka” — also applies to them. Thus, they don’t feel
threatened and they continue to do drugs.

Coupled with the delay in case proceedings (lack of swiftness) and the erroneous police methodologies
(lack of certainty), the PDLs don’t see a connection between their drug use and the punishing conditions
(lack of severity). Massive killings and arrests, and overcrowded jails and prisons therefore have no
deterrent effect when it comes to perennial drug users.

More meaningful tracts

Admittedly, this qualitative information is anecdotal, and more interviews need to be conducted before
one can generalize the findings. Still, this puts in to question the utility of horrible correctional facilities
as deterrents to crime and drug use.
More importantly, it suggests that other more meaningful tracts need to be entertained by the highly
popular President to effect change in the criminal-justice system.

He can start by improving the correctional conditions, increasing the number of court actors, and
professionalizing the police, jail, and prison services.

He can adopt the principles of effective correctional management where PDLs are properly classified,
housed and treated while in jails and prisons, so they can later be released as responsible citizens of the
country. He can use many advocates of jail and prison reforms as partners who share his frustrations
about the justice system but offer more humane approaches.

He can also permanently halt the wanton arrests of tambays and drug users.

These policies have created a monster in our criminal justice system, a monster that is used to justify the
use of more punitive policies. This humanitarian crisis has afflicted our correctional system, and will all
haunt us down the road, three more SONAs from now.