By Lourd Ernest H. De Veyra
Photography: Paolo Picones

One does not begin to understand the true meaning of the phrase “the reek of humanity” until one has stepped foot into the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) in Cebu City. Imagine an overwhelming stench of sweat plus a terrifying assortment of bodily odors that have dried up and then denied escape through decent circulation channels. It is a smell that is not forgotten easily. Combined with the heat and the humidity, “that alone is punishment enough,” says Efren Nemeño, BBRC’s young jail warden.

And it’s no longer an exaggeration. Extreme overcrowding is the biggest problem of the Philippine penal system and the BBRC is a clear example—imagine over 2,000 inmates in a facility that was originally designed for a mere 250 people, a ratio that would be brutal even to livestock and zoo animals. It’s enough to make the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals rethink their advocacy. It is not without irony that “bagong buhay” means “new life” in Filipino.

Forget images of concrete-and-metal fortresses with cold, sinister-looking cubicles that you see in movies— most Philippine prisons look like slum dwellings, except for the iron bars, barbed-wire walls, and M-16-toting guards. It is not surprising to find more than 20 to 30 occupants inside a cell meant for eight. Because of the limited bunks, inmates have to stretch their imaginations about the various methods of attaining comfort. Half of them sleep on the floor, if lucky. The unfortunate would have to make do with whatever space is left, and they better have the extraordinary dexterity of a Hindu fakir. Beyond these, they have to fight space with plastic bags, electric fans, and clotheslines. By noontime, you can smell fish being fried, it being among the cheapest sources of protein.

Because of the heat, the inmates do not even have the luxury of being clad in orange overalls with the big P on the back. The only way to survive is to wear shorts and go shirtless, perhaps the better to display crudely drawn tattoos ranging from women’s names to gang emblems to Christ’s agonized face. At least inmates can freely roam throughout the yards in prisons with high fences and sufficient security systems. At least, some have basketball courts, DVD players, small vegetable gardens, and—gasp—karaoke machines to while away the time.

Others, like the city jail in the northern province of La Union, confine their inmates 24-7 to impossibly small cells without even a TV set. At eight years, Mang Leonardo is the longest-serving prisoner. “You can’t even stretch out your arms for exercise without hitting someone’s face,” he says. Kobe cattle has better fate.

But since space is a luxury, even something like a basketball court has other uses. The one in BBRC, for instance, has been turned into a sort of outdoor quarters to accommodate more prisoners who could no longer squeeze into the already stuffed cells. It looks like a mixture of a refugee camp and a fish market. Early this year, 35 prisoners were electrocuted after an inmate mistakenly attached one wire to another in an effort to plug an electric fan, a vital piece of appliance that spells the difference between suffocation and survival during humid summer nights.

At present the Philippine prison population is at an estimated 70,000, with more than 20,000 of that composed of the National Capital Region. Ronaldo Puno, secretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), said that the total jail population in BJMP-supervised jails could reach 89,000 in 2008, 101,250 in 2009, and 114,930 in 2010, way beyond the jail’s capacities.

It is said that one of the strategies to decongest jails include the revision of certain laws. For instance, as of April 2007, there are 22,128 cases involving drugs. One La Union inmate, a young carpenter, was locked up for two years for drug possession. His contraband: a single marijuana joint.

Philippine prisons are breeding grounds for horrors. More than the overcrowding, there is the daily food budget of P40 (US$0.63) per prisoner, which, at three meals a day, can never be considered decent by any stretch of the imagination. There are the fortunate ones who receive outside supplies of canned food from relatives. The unlucky majority will have to settle for grub limited to cheap vegetables and, if lucky, small fish varieties like dilis and galunggong either fried or cooked in vinegar with ginger (not exactly as glamorous as it sounds). The food isn’t exactly the triumph of haute cuisine presentation—most of the time it’s just one shade away from pig slop. “When we spill some of the food on the ground,” chuckles Edwin De Vera, a longtime inmate at the Quezon City Jail, “the dog won’t even eat it.”

In contrast, a congressman sentenced for statutory rape is now said to operate his own hamburger stand inside the Muntinlupa. And has managed to convince jail authorities to allow him to build a tennis court right within the premises. Even among the convicted, there is no such thing as equality.

There’s also the issue of the one-peso-a-day budget for medicines— a troubling thought, considering hygiene and sanitation are not usually the virtues of Philippine jails. Only recently, the local news program TV Patrol reported a prisoner suffering from a skin disease so terminal and debilitating he had to be rushed to the hospital by the news crew themselves. The tragic part is that no emergency room would even take him in. No small wonder, if you actually saw what his sores looked like: they were enough to scare even the most jaded paramedic. That he was a poor prisoner hardly helped appeal to the physicians’ sense of pity. A few hours later, the man died.

But the worst tales involve minors, who, until recently, were detained in adult prisons, a phenomenon met with international shock and condemnation. Before the enactment of the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, this was not an uncommon sight in many jails all over the Philippines— boys as young as 11 sharing the same breathing space with murderers, drug dealers, robbers, and other hardened criminals. Now this might seem as simple as the proverbial barrel mixing good apples with the rotten ones. But there is something profoundly disturbing in photographs of prepubescent boys with ugly tattoos, with cigarettes dangling from their lips, and hamming it up with nasty-looking goons. The acclaimed 2005 documentary “Bunso” by Ditsi Carolino and Nana Buxani offered a harrowing look into this world.

But there may be hope. The Philippine government has set aside a budget of P3.272 billion for the maintenance and operation of jails nationwide. The DILG disclosed that of said budget this year for the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), about P165 million will go to logistical services for the procurement, transport, distribution, and storage of supplies and materials in the operation of district, city, and municipal jails throughout the country.

Yet, if the rising incidence of crimes can be traced to the increasing poverty level, then the Philippine government still has a lot of work ahead of it. In Metro Manila alone, more than 4 million squatters continue to live in subhuman conditions: claustrophobic slums pieced together with recycled plywood and junk not even fit to be called houses, fetid water sources, and families scavenging through scrap for food. Between prison and this, sometimes it can be quite hard to tell the difference.

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