EVERY year when summer arrives, it’s not only those “who are outside” experience and suffer the heat of this months of the year. While we often complain the sweat and the exhaustion, we need to think those people who are doing nothing yet cramped in crowded detention cells.
Recently, an inmate at the congested police jail died while seven others collapsed and were rushed to the hospital due to exhaustion and dehydration. The Philippine National Police (PNP) retorted its admission that indeed detention cells of police stations are overcrowded with the number of inmates far higher than the ideal number.
In addition to the lack of ample jail areas that are under the custody and authority of the PNP as a factor for the congestion, a lot are getting arrested since the launch of the massive illegal drugs campaign of the government.
Those who are arrested for the said campaign are added to those who are already serving their sentences or simply in detention while waiting for courts’ decisions. Evidently, our detention facilities lacks space.
Even those who are detained deserve humane conditions and putting someone behind bars aside from penalizing them is also an act of giving them reformatory process.
As an initial move of the PNP, some detainees on police detention cells are moved to facilities of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology or the BJMP even if the latter’s jails are congested too.
Prior to the retirement of PNP Chief Ronald Dela Rosa, he promised to include in the yearly budget of the national police the improvement of police jail facilities. As per his promise, he vowed for the construction of additional buildings that will be utilized as PNP detention cells.
In addition, the PNP shall coordinate with the courts to expedite the release of commitment orders of convicted inmates to facilitate their transfer to other detention facilities.
In Pampanga, worthy to acknowledge is the much improvement of the Pampanga Provincial Jail better known to old folks as “the Presidio”.
Under the initiative of Governor Lilia Pineda, the old presidio has undergone improvement with the addition of new detention cells and the putting up of facilities for inmates who are undergoing reformatory processes.
Through the years, the provincial government led the reformation of the jail facility into a conducive and better looking detention building. This includes its façade and its surroundings.
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