There are prisoners and there are rich prisoners. You can either be one or the other. In the Philippines, the latter has special privileges than he could hopefully ask for…or pays for. Why are prominent prisoners allowed to have their own huts outside the prison compound? These prisoners live there like free men, and not inside their prison cells. This policy, made legal in the prison system only shows that even inside prison, class distinction remains: the poor are underprivileged and the wealthy continue to be privileged. Yes, only in the Philippines. Woe to those prisoners who have no money to neither bribe nor bargain for, they rot in jail so long as their entire sentences last.
Such are just among the flaws this prison system our country has. While getting justice for a crime against us or to our love one is so long a process one has to painfully and desperately endure, the finality is not yet over even if the verdict is for the guilty to rot in jail. Before one knows it, the moneyed guilty party is in and out of jail enjoying a freedom which otherwise is a right allowed only to a law abiding citizen. How very ironical. This has been a rotting system practiced for too long a time regardless of who is holding the highest official in the government’s office. Presidents come and go, promising positive state changes one after the other, but nobody among them left with that part of the agency, the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), cleaned and freed from all rotten system it has been known for. But then, what’s new?
High profile jail personalities like Rolito Go, Romeo Jalosjos, and of very late, former Batangas governor Jose Antonio Leviste, guilty of murder, and God knows who else, in whose committed crimes are as sensational as their personalities, were just among those featured to have enjoyed special privileges while rendering their supposed sentences in jail.
“Heads will surely roll”, or so a government official said each time a mess such as this appeared in the headlines. A statement used and overused from mouths of government officials, then and now. But it remained exactly just those…words. No concrete steps are and was undertaken. Not in the past. Surely, not now.
The present administration claims fighting corruption is the number one priority. Now is the right time to shine as calls for an overhaul to the country’s penal system in the wake of a recent incident is being talked about. For how else can you describe the rationale behind these special privileges inside the cell except corruption in its highest order? For a Director of Prisons to say that the rotten system is there already before he came in or assumed office is a bullshit par excellence. Any chief of an agency, be it government of private, has the ability to change a system for the better. It is always a challenge to be given a job whose responsibility calls one to make a major overhaul over an ineffective system. Other government appointees just accept a job without meaning to offer something fresh and new to start the trust of people all over again. They knowingly continue to head a corrupt system and yet have the balls to give it as their excuse. What funny kind of leadership!
We have been in awe with other advanced countries in many respects, copying one aspect to another, why cannot we copy their style of no-nonsense style of leadership and management? Why, ours remains to be full of flaws and thus put our justice and legal system in mockery. Aren’t we feed up of how many people power revolution we have to stage to deserve a better change in the government?
Let us call for an iron hand to come up with a strong recommendation on the conduct and treatment of prisoners in our Bureau of Corrections, regardless of whether an inmate has money or not. For, clearly the existing set-up is terribly flawed, such that neither removal nor reassignment of certain personnel alone merit a big change. What is called for instead is sweeping top-to bottom reforms. This has been going on for years; does this have to go for a lifetime? I hope this country is beyond that. We shall call the government to put their acts together. Now is the time to stop talking and start working.
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