With Duterte’s declaration of an all-out war with drugs and criminality, the question of jail sustainability arises.
Quezon city jail houses up to 3,800 inmates despite its capacity for only 800, that is almost five times its housing capacity. This prison jails were build six decades ago.
With the drug war at its peak, hundreds of criminals have been killed while thousands have been caught and detained in almost just a month since Duterte’s term started, and we are expecting more in the span of the first six months of the new administration, now how are this penitentiaries suppose to sustain life inside the cells?
“Many go crazy. They cannot think straight. It’s so crowded. Just the slightest of movements and you bump into something or someone.” Dimaculangan, a pseudonym of one of the inmates, told the AFP.
Men live in a jail that is decaying and can no longer provide a life that is suitable for man, these people need to take turns in sleeping on a basketball court in the prison. They are sustained through a daily budget of P50 for food and P5 for medicine.
A criminal justice scholar from Southern Illinois University from US revealed that this type of situation is not even considered fit for human habitation in Western nations.
“If this happened in America, there would be a riot every day. Courts would declare these jails unfit for human habitation.”
“If there are no new jails, no budget increases, no additional courts and prosecutors, the system will explode. That will be a humanitarian crisis,” he added.
Source: TNP, GMAnetwork
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