DEPARTMENT of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla on Friday said newly convicted persons will no longer be incarcerated at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City.
Remulla indicated that the measure was meant to stop further congestion at the national penitentiary.
“We will just bring them to the other jails available, the other prisons available. We will stop increasing the population in the NBP. The number (of prisoners) there will decrease,” Remulla said in a media briefing.
“You should not enculturate a person to a bad environment if possible. Let’s try to spare them from the travails of having to go through an institution like the NBP,” Remulla added.
The DOJ chief said new persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) could instead be brought to the Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm in Occidental Mindoro, the San Ramon Prison and Penal Farm in Zamboanga del Sur, the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in Mindanao in Davao del Norte, and the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan.
Remulla said the moratorium took effect immediately, although he would still write a letter about it to Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) chief Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. “So that he can tell the courts that it is already a policy of the DOJ not to bring anybody else into the NBP,” Remulla said.
He added they would also be coordinating on the matter with the Department of the Interior and Local Government.
“Hopefully, the local government officials with provincial jails can help us so that those sentenced to less than six years may be accommodated, so they will not be brought to NBP,” Remulla said.
Remulla previously bared that there could be mass graves inside the NBP.
“The culture that the witnesses told us seems to indicate this has been going on for a long time. There are gangs (in the NBP) with a proclivity to bury individuals in the septic tank,” he said.
International criminal justice expert and consultant Dr. Raymund Narag said there was a transmission of culture from one PDL to the next.
“There is a culture that all PDLs and all personnel should know, and there are rules of the game that you need to follow in order to survive in Bilibid,” Narag said.
“The culture has become crimenologic because there are inmates who did not behave like criminals outside the prison, but will learn this kind
of behavior inside. And this is because of the huge structural deficits that are taking place,” he said.
According to Narag, the country’s prison structure must be fixed.
Meanwhile, Catapang said BuCor jail guards were also being re-evaluated following a July 25 incident during which a PDL fired a gun
after two members of the Batang City Jail and Bahala Na Gang quarreled.
According to the BuCor chief, the PDLs, in their manifesto, asked for forgiveness following the incident and expressed their regret. They
also promised to maintain peace and order and to police their own ranks.