Congested and dilapidated, in fact shockingly so, is the state of the Philippines’ correctional facilities. The government is finally paying attention to this sorry situation and is tapping the private sector to build and run a state-of-the-art prison in General Tinio, Nueva Ecija. If things go as planned, a P50-billion prison capable of holding 26,880 inmates will be in operation on a 500-hectare property in Fort Magsaysay by March 2019.
This development, in turn, will free up valuable pieces of property such as those occupied by the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) and the Correctional Institution for Women in the cities of Muntinlupa and Mandaluyong, respectively. What the government will spend for the new facility in Nueva Ecija, it can easily recover from privatizing the commercial lands to be vacated.
For years, the prisons have been a “national emergency” begging for reform and modernization. In a Senate hearing early this year, the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) disclosed that the seven penal communities across the country had a total population of 41,000. The NBP, which has a maximum capacity of 8,508, houses about 23,000 inmates, 14,500 of them in the maximum security compound.
The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology also suffers from congestion in its district, city and municipal jails. Its chief legal counsel, Senior Insp. Roy P. Valenzuela, said that the situation in the BJMP is much worse: As of December 2014, there were 82,000 inmates in 459 jail facilities, for a congestion rate of 410 percent. He added that instead of having 4.7 square meters of jail space for each inmate, the situation at BJMP facilities was five inmates for the same space; the guard to prisoner ratio was one to 44, instead of the ideal one to seven.
During a hearing last February on the extravagant lifestyles of wealthy inmates of the NBP, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, described the current state of the prison system thus: “Inadequate and poor maintenance of penal facilities have resulted in bloody fights and anarchy and the proliferation of criminal activities, while others live like kings in their air-conditioned special cells called ‘kubol.’”
The planned new facility will provide humane living conditions for convicts. Last month, the Department of Justice and BuCor invited companies to bid for a 23-year contract to build and operate a new prison in Fort Magsaysay, the biggest military reservation in the country. Through the Aquino administration’s flagship public-private partnership program, the new facility will provide adequate living spaces and facilities and address the basic needs of convicts incarcerated in the existing penal facilities. It will include staff housing, administrative buildings, and areas for rehabilitation (mainly sports, counseling, work and religious activity).
It will also have an administration and central reception building, catering and laundry facilities, a hospital and morgue, back-up power capability and modern security equipment, dormitory housing for 4,500 employees, and bungalow/condominium housing for senior staff. In all, it will have a footprint of 170 hectares with a gross floor area of 600,000 square meters and a capacity of 26,880 beds. There will be much open space because the entire site covers 500 hectares.
A prebidding conference is scheduled on June 15, the submission of bids on Aug. 14, and contract-signing in September. The start of construction is planned in March, and project completion in March 2019.
This early, big names in business such as San Miguel Corp., Megawide Corp. and DM Consunji Inc. have expressed interest in bidding for the modern prison project.
During the Senate hearing early this year, BuCor Director Franklin Jesus B. Bucayu lamented that his bureau had been “significantly deficient,” and that this deficiency—long neglected and overlooked—had led to bigger and deeper institutional problems such as prison congestion and inadequate security measures both in terms of infrastructure and personnel. The planned modern facility will hopefully put an end to this nightmare. By transforming the prisons, perhaps the government can indeed help rebuild lives.