Reelected Senator Vicente Sotto III has filed a bill that seeks to establish a separate jail for the country’s big-time drug offenders to boost the government’s campaign against illegal drugs.
Sotto said his proposal , Senate Bill No. 3226, provides for different categories of drug offenders and inmates who would be kept in separate institutions or parts of institutions taking into account their sex, criminal records, legal status of their detention and the requirements for their rehabilitation
In his explanatory note of Senate Bill No. 3226, Sotto said that the present treatment program and detention security measures in the Bureau of Corrections are inadequate to prevent convicted drugs lords from continuing with their illegal practices even while in detention at the New Bilibid Prisons.
“Recent incidents proved that convicted drug lords have continued to ply their trade inside the premises of the national penitentiary, probably with the aid of regular inmates with whom they are commingled with,” Sotto said.
In December last year, enforcers from the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and Philippine National Police, raided the NBP’s maximum security compound where they found drug-making equipment and entertainment gadgets.
He said that the philosophy of penology recognizes the need to classify the prisoners into reasonable categories for rehabilitation, treatment and protection of society.
“This is one of the mandated responsibilities of the Bureau of Corrections in safekeeping inmates and completely incapacitating them, especially high-level illegal-drugs offenders, while serving their sentences,” Sotto said.
Section 10 of the proposed measure states that “an internal inspection, which is conducted by the prison administration, and an external inspection, which is conducted by Anti-Drug Board, shall be conducted on a regular basis to ensure that the institution is administered in accordance with existing laws and regulations and to bring about the attainment of the objectives of the penal system.”
Likewise the bill said that “there shall be conducted a regular random drug testing among the inmates in the Anti-Drug Penal Institution.
The random drug testing shall be done by any forensic laboratories or by any of the drug testing laboratories accredited and monitored by the Department of Health (DOH) to safeguard the quality of test results.”
Under the Bill, the Anti-Drug Penal Institution shall have the same design of prison facilities, reformation and administrative facilities as all the other prisons and penal farms of the BuCor.