[Pinoy Criminology] Bring the prisons closer to home

The Bureau of Corrections has publicly announced that the New Bilibid Prison will be closed by 2028. The government has already begun transferring thousands of persons deprived of liberty from Muntinlupa to penal farms and regional facilities throughout the country. Since 2022, more than 15,000 PDLs have reportedly been transferred as part of this massive decentralization program. They have been moved to facilities in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro; Iwahig, Palawan; Abuyog, Leyte; San Ramon, Zamboanga City; and Panabo, Davao del Norte. The prison population is being dispersed, but the human consequences of that dispersal remain largely unseen. There is sound reasoning behind the regionalization of the prison system. New Bilibid Prison has long symbolized congestion, neglect, violence, corruption, and the institutional failures of Philippine corrections. Its enormous population has made effective classification, individualized programming, case management, and rehabilitation extremely difficult. Smaller regional facilities can become safer, more manageable, and more responsive to the different risks and needs of incarcerated individuals. Regionalization, when properly implemented, can move the country away from the warehouse model of imprisonment. There is also merit in the government’s plan to transform the vast New Bilibid Prison reservation into a commercial and income-generating area. Properly developed and transparently managed, portions of the property could generate resources to help sustain correctional operations, improve facilities, professionalize personnel, and expand rehabilitation programs. BuCor has already explored proposals to develop or lease portions of its properties in preparation for the prison’s closure. The land should not remain idle while correctional institutions throughout the country struggle with inadequate resources. Regionalized abandonment But property development must never become more important than the people displaced by that development. The problem is that many PDLs from Metro Manila and Northern Luzon are now being transferred hundreds, sometimes thousands, of kilometers away from their families. A person from Cagayan, Isabela, Ilocos Norte, Pangasinan, Baguio, or Metro Manila may find himself confined in Leyte, Palawan, Zamboanga, or Davao. For government officials, this may appear to be a simple matter of population redistribution. For poor families, however, it can mean an impossible journey involving airplane fares, boat tickets, bus rides, meals, lodging, and several days away from work. Regionalization may ease congestion, but it can also regionalize abandonment. Family visitation is not a mere privilege that prison administrators may casually disregard. It is an essential component of rehabilitation, mental health, institutional stability, and successful reintegration. Families provide emotional support, food, medicine, legal information, and a continuing connection to ordinary community life. They remind the incarcerated person that there is still a home to return to and a life that can still be rebuilt. When families cannot visit, the punishment extends beyond the person convicted and reaches spouses, parents, and children who committed no crime. Distance also creates serious difficulties in following up legal cases and securing early-release opportunities. Families often coordinate with lawyers, courts, parole officers, prison records personnel, and government agencies. They help obtain documents, certificates, clearances, and records needed for parole, executive clemency, good-conduct time allowances, and other lawful release mechanisms. When the PDL is detained in a distant island or region, communication becomes slower and bureaucratic errors become harder to correct. A missing document can become another year in prison, while a delayed signature can become another season away from home. The Bureau of Corrections has therefore correctly requested national support for the establishment of additional regional prisons in Luzon. Facilities are urgently needed in the Ilocos Region, Cagayan Valley, the Cordillera Administrative Region, Central Luzon, and Calabarzon. Metro Manila will likewise require accessible correctional facilities as New Bilibid Prison is gradually emptied and closed. These should not be gigantic prisons that merely reproduce the problems of Bilibid elsewhere. They should be smaller, professionally managed, adequately staffed, and designed around classification, education, treatment, livelihood, mental health, family contact, and reintegration. Humane prison system The national government must allocate the land, resources, and institutional support required to construct these facilities. It should begin planning before the last prisoners are transferred and before families are completely separated by geography and poverty. Prison reform cannot simply mean moving bodies from one overcrowded institution into several distant institutions. It must mean creating correctional environments where security, accountability, rehabilitation, and human dignity can exist together. A humane prison system does not merely ask where a person can be securely confined; it also asks how that person can remain connected to the family and community to which he will eventually return. Regional prisons in Luzon are therefore not merely construction projects. They are investments in public safety, rehabilitation, family unity, and successful reintegration. They would reduce the enormous financial burden imposed on poor families while making case monitoring and release preparation more efficient. They would allow BuCor to build institutions that are smaller, safer, and more manageable than New Bilibid Prison. Most importantly, they would affirm a basic principle of humane correctional management: imprisonment may restrict liberty, but it should not unnecessarily destroy the human relationships that make rehabilitation possible. – Rappler.com Raymund E. Narag, PhD, is an associate professor in criminology and criminal justice at the School of Justice and Public Safety, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.