Palace: Bilibid plagued with ‘systemic, personnel’ woes

MANILA, Philippines— Malacañang on Wednesday said the recent incidents at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP), such as the discovery of 19 “very important prisoners” (VIPs) and the attempted rape of an 8-year-old daughter of an inmate, reveal systemic and personnel problems which persist in the state penitentiary.

“It’s systemic and personnel, right? I mean, you’ve got people who are being bribed to allow… I mean, these things don’t happen without cooperation from those penitentiary officials. So it’s both personnel and systemic,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said.

Lacierda said Justice Secretary Leila de Lima will be implementing short and long-term reforms in the NBP to eliminate these problems.

“So, short-term, we are able to make sure that the VIPs lifestyles are checked. They should not be living as barons in the penitentiary. We have stopped that. Long-term, the Secretary of Justice will be coming up or has come up with institutional reform measures to make sure that those things won’t happen again,” Lacierda added.

Lacierda said that the raids conducted on the Bilibid VIPs new detention facility in the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) are reflective of the justice department’s push to weed out “shenanigans” in the penitentiary.

“The fact that you were able to apprehend shows that we’re tightening the noose on those ways of committing all these shenanigans within the detention areas. So we’re seeing the tightening of the noose on this measure or on these methods of smuggling or bringing in contraband. But, again, these are certainly things that should not be there,” he said.

Two raids last December 29 and January 4 in the NBI Detention Facility where the 19 VIPs are currently being detained resulted in the discovery of wads of cash totaling P800,000 and some gadgets including bluetooth headsets and mobile phones.

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