Humane detention

The commotion at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center last Friday and the subsequent response of the provincial government that reportedly included the deprivation of Saturday breakfast from the inmates begs a number of questions.

First, how did Carillo Balueza manage to improvise an ice pick that he brandished leading to a melee with fellow detainees who were rehearsing for the monthly dance in public?

Jail guards should go beyond rote inspection knowing that barred from laying their hands on the usual arms, anyone in jail can make a weapon out of items that seem harmless at first glance, not to mention resort to having dangerous objects smuggled into jail, as an inspection conducted in the wake of the near-riot showed: prison guards seized a scissor and some improvised ice picks and other sharp objects.

Sentinels ought not to wait for upheavals in jail to sniff out dangerous items. Close inspections of jail cells should be the norm, otherwise hundreds of inmates who could get squashed in a kerfuffle would suffer double jeopardy in sustaining injuries.

Second, how well is the jail administration looking after the psychological well being of the prisoners?

The question is crucial because while Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia boasts of the ergonomic comfort of the CPDRC compared with other jail facilities across the globe, prisons in humane society are not places where people are sent to rot. They are penitentiaries, spaces for ruing wrongful, criminal acts. But the ruing cannot happen without the aid of proper counsel and sans counsel hardened criminals can only become petrified.

The dance routines that the inmates practice month after month for eventual public display are supposedly means for them to maintain sanity in isolation from larger society. How ironic that a near-riot would erupt amid an activity designed to calm convicts.

There must be something more than dance steps taken, and the governor and the jail management board should come up with the method to ensure that prisoners will not be so poised to react with violence at a moment’s threat, as evinced in Friday’s incident, after which Balueza was treated for bruises and head injuries.

Preachers often say that the only difference between people who are in jail and out of it is that those who are outside were never caught doing wrong red-handed.

If we can only treat those who are in jail with mechanical efficiency and not without hope for their reform, that attitude towards those who are counted among the least perhaps explains why much is also wanting in terms of humaneness in social services elsewhere.

Jail administration must remember: They owe taxpayers the best possible, the most creative use of public funds, even in the work of justice that is the effort to reform the imprisoned.