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Friday, July 07, 2006
Speak out: The CPDRC experience
By Byron F. Garcia
Consultant on Security, Cebu Provincial Government
Penology in the country has always been equated with crime and punishment. Or crime plus punishment equals rehabilitation and reformation. But it can also mean crime plus punishment plus rehabilitation equals prison management.
Gray areas and loopholes abound in jail management, as there are many ways to circumvent rehabilitation. At the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), the approach to rehabilitation is discipline, physical fitness, dismantling of the culture of corruption and preemptive decongestion.
It is a concept that views behavioral change and culture in the microcosm of a sick society, which is, the jail.
It is actually inside jails or rehabilitation centers that societal decadence is magnified. Drug trafficking and smuggling, addiction, politics and corruption prevail and proliferate because the jail environment provides fertile grounds for these to spread and transmit rapidly.
No matter how restrictive regulations may be, inmates and even jail guards can find loopholes in an already flawed system, making corruption a never-ending cycle.
Security, too, looks beyond the physical aspect. While padlocks and sophisticated gadgetry may physically shut off and isolate inmates from the world, it does not assure security.
Cultural, behavioral
Security must be approached not only physically but also from the cultural and behavioral context.
Inmates at the CPDRC are required to go through a workout regimen. While the goal is to keep the body fit in order to keep the mind fit, such may not actually happen if it is not done in a manner deemed pleasurable. Music, being the language of the soul, is added to that regimen.
Decadent cultures in jails are only spillovers of the culture outside. In approaching behavioral and cultural change, one has to look at the decadence of society to change the culture in the jail.
To do away with inmate and jail guard politics, rehabilitation must employ divide and rule. This is meant to discourage organization among inmates, where inherently gang culture exists.
Here lies the blunder. Penology or jail management in this country has never looked at gang culture in jails as one that actually propagates corruption and decadent culture. In most cases, jail authorities support and tolerate gang culture without considering that it actually impedes rehabilitation.
Gangs breed corruption and corruption breeds enmity and animosity between inmates or between inmates and guards.
Four components
To prevent familiarity between inmates and guards, security is done in four component forces: the Capitol Civil Security Forces, which conducts surprise greyhound operations and is tasked to inspect visitors during visiting days; the jail guards, who have direct contact with the inmates; the Provincial Security Group, which escorts inmates to and from court hearings; and the blue guards that check on the three security components at the entrance of the facility.
While the old practice of using jail guards won’t vanish, a four-tiered check-and-balance approach is used to plug the gaps for corruption.
To do away with corruption in jail finances, budgets are allocated and released directly from the Capitol treasury. Fund management, especially on food, is taken away from jail authorities.
Inmates, too, are not allowed to hold cash. Money is considered illegal. A system is provided where inmates can entrust their cash to jail authorities and have these converted to purchase orders. This is to ensure that money won’t be used for the purchase of contraband and to discourage gambling.
Jail capacity
While Jail authorities in this country continue to find ways to solve jail congestion or over-crowding, CPDRC has taken the very simple approach, which is by shutting its doors once it reaches full capacity.
What seems to be contemptuous and arrogant would prove to be admirable and humbling in the end, for it gives utmost consideration to the general welfare and security of the occupants inside the jail. Jails in our country are congested because penology chose it to be.
True rehabilitation may need revolutionary change in policies and approaches. At the CPDRC, the experience in responsive rehabilitation has proven that revolutionary change can be done from within.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 7, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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