COVID-19, curfew arrests magnify jail system’s ills

(Second of two parts)

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has thrown a harsh light on the cruelty of the Philippine jail system, where thousands who have not yet been convicted of any crime spend years in detention which the human rights monitor Amnesty International calls a “routine and harsh practice.”

The number of detainees, or persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), has swelled since the drug war began in 2016, straining already scant resources for jail food and upkeep.

There has been no letup in the arrests and detentions, and in this time of COVID-19, they result from the enforcement of community quarantines and social distancing rules.

According to the Philippine National Police, there were 23,145 in Luzon alone who were arrested between March 17 and April 29 for violating curfews, much more than those who were fined over the same period for the same offense.

Of those arrested, 1,442 are still detained, the PNP said.

There has been no sign of a significant slowdown in apprehensions—815 were arrested on April 29 compared to 1,163 on March 17.

Though initially placed in cells at police stations, these curfew violators could wind up in jails run by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) where inmates who have not yet been sentenced are held in custody. The additional detainees could further burden the jail system which is bursting at its seams.

Deal with jail gangs

In March, the BJMP said its jail network was over capacity by as much as 534 percent.

“How can you contain the spread of infection in a situation when the World Health Organization guideline of social distancing of 3 meters cannot even be practiced?” said Fides Lim of Kapatid, an organization that advocates prisoners’ rights and welfare.

“When inmates sleep they are practically on top of one another. There’s no running water. They cannot supply soap,” she said.

In some instances, desperate inmates deal with jail gangs to get some relief in exchange for favors, but mostly cash.

David, who is detained at the Quezon City Jail (QCJ), the third most populous in the country, shares a common area with hundreds. He was asked to pay P12,000 to gang bosses just to get a spot to sleep on.

But his mother, Ina, a casino worker, did not have that kind of money.

The youngest of Ina’s nine children, David, 21, a high school student, was arrested in November with a backpack allegedly filled with illegal drugs. Ina, who did not want to give her full name for fear of reprisal, said her son was framed.

She has been visiting him at the QCJ every Thursday since his arrest.

Ina said that the visits were nothing like in the movies. Instead of David being brought out to a visitor’s hall, she had to enter his cell in the company of the other inmates.

The experience shocked her. “It gives me the shakes until now,” she said.

She brought him food—usually egg or ‘pancit canton’—and some money.

Meals provided by the jail were never enough and often verged on the inedible, she explained.

Since the health crisis started, food sold inside the QCJ became more expensive. A P25 can of sardines had doubled in price, according to her son.

After the enhanced community quarantine was imposed in mid-March, the BJMP barred all jail visits.

Ina and her son made clandestine calls on a contraband phone he shared with hundreds of other inmates.

When they last spoke, David told her he was feeling sick. A few days after that she learned that nine inmates at QCJ tested positive for the new coronavirus.

The BJMP did not identify the infected inmates, leaving her dreading the worst.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” Ina said. “I was completely in the dark.”

Days later she received a call from an unknown number. It was her son. They spoke for barely a minute—but David was fine.

Temporary release

“I could finally breathe,” Ina said. But she knew the danger to her son remained.

The COVID-19 infections at QCJ had prompted human rights groups to push the government to temporarily release sick, elderly and low-risk detainees to decongest the country’s jails which could be major contagion hot spots.

Nonviolent suspects like David make up a sizable bulk of the jail population.

In a statement last week, Amnesty International supported the release of detainees, noting that over 220,000 of them had been arrested under President Duterte’s bloody drug war.

It said World Prison Brief data showed that 75 percent of the prison population in the country in 2018 was made up of pretrial or remand inmates.

“International law requires that imprisonment pending trial should be the exception, not the norm,” it said.

Amnesty urged authorities to “take immediate measures to decrease the prison population.”

The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) on April 6 petitioned the Supreme Court to release 22 political detainees on humanitarian grounds as they were vulnerable to COVID-19 due to their age and existing illnesses.

Local groups have pointed to prisoner releases in countries like Iran, the United Kingdom and United States.

“Country after country are opening their prison doors to release prisoners in order to save human life,” Lim said. “Our specific demand is to release prisoners who are most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

SolGen objection

But Solicitor General Jose Calida opposed the petition, saying there were “no humanitarian considerations involved, but merely opportunistic legalism to distort established judicial processes” and that the appeal was “just a ruse” for the detainees to evade incarceration.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on the petition, which, if granted, could also apply to other detainees or prisoners in similar situations.

According to NUPL president Edre Olalia, the country’s notoriously laborious judicial system was not the only venue for obtaining remedies.

“Politically, we can call on the President to issue either a general or special amnesty to release various kinds of prisoners,” he said. “Or we can ask Congress to rush a special law to decongest jails and provide who will be covered and the modes for it.”

‘No money here’

Leyte Rep. Vicente Veloso III, chair of the House committee on justice, endorsed the call to grant provisional liberty to detainees who were confined cheek by jowl.

Lim said Kapatid had written Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Sen. Richard Gordon, the Senate justice committee chair, seeking action, but neither has replied.

“The problem with Congress, and we all know this, is that it isn’t moving because there’s no money here,” said Egon Cayosa, national president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP). “If this was construction, they would be competing over it because that’s where the votes and money are.”

Cayosa said IBP was now wresting certain cases from the Public Attorney’s Office to speed up releases.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) could also move on its own to expedite the processing of pardons, paroles and commutations, Olalia said.

The BJMP has said it would wait for court orders before releasing inmates, but Lim said it should be proactive. “Start making your lists. You alone know very well who the elderly and the sick are,” she said.

According to Cayosa, the national health crisis could be a watershed moment for the country’s justice system.

Alternative to bail

The IBP called on Congress, the Supreme Court and the DOJ to consider alternatives to cash bail, a reform that could dramatically ease congestion.

“The reality is most of those who go to jail are really poor,” Cayosa said. “All that is needed from them is assurance that they will attend their hearing as needed. Why make it an economic burden for them?”

“The system has become the detriment to your temporary liberty,” he added.

The Supreme Court reported on Thursday that 9,731 PDLs had been released on bail from March 17 to April 29. It also set lower bail fees so that qualified detainees could afford them.

Lim said she was hoping that the government would exercise “the simple spirit of human compassion” in releasing inmates. “There are people, too, with the capacity for reformation,” she said.

But the looming threat of COVID-19 was all the more sinister here, she added, where thousands of inmates allegedly framed by police or arrested on false charges would not stand a chance against the disease.

“They should not even have spent a single day in prison,” she said.