Tear it down, now!

The Rolito Go “escape/kidnap” plot thickens with the arrest of a New Bilibid Prison (NBP) inmate who was reported missing last Aug. 15, after Go resurfaced and was brought back to the NBP. Rommel Laciste, convicted for the 2006 murder of an assistant provincial probation officer in Isabela, initially told investigators that Go paid a fee of P2 million to the NBP guards for his freedom. But after further interrogation – whatever that could mean – he has recanted his initial statement and now says that he was hired by a kin of a politician from Isabela to do a “job”. A job to liquidate another politician from the same province! He was helped by the said visitor to escape by riding an unchecked van out of the NBP, but was eventually caught in Naguilian town in Isabela. Although there is credence to his latest story, he refuses to identify both the visitor at the NBP and the eventual target of assassination, probably for fear of his life.

This is so ironic, and stupid at the same time! Here we have a murder convict, who is probably serving a reclusion perpetua sentence, has already escaped once in 2008, and is now saying that he was allowed to go out to perform an assassination. How many more years of incarceration are going to be on top of his original sentence, which will probably run the rest of his life if there is still a working justice system at the NBP? And now he fears for his life by not revealing the person behind his escape, and by revealing the system of guns for hire within the NBP?

So now we have concrete proof of two systems that occur in this useless prison. That the rich and influential are allowed to make clandestine “field trips” outside the prison, partially enjoying freedom, and that guns for hire are available at the same place! My goodness, you call this a prison?

I really reiterate that it is time to close down this facility and build a new one, in a very remote place. Apparently, its present location at Muntinlupa City was remote at the time of its construction in 1936. It was officially operational in 1940 and was renamed the New Bilibid Prison, the old one being at the heart of Manila built during the Spanish era! Progress and an increasing population in the metropolis has made this “remote” area, urban. Which is why the prison has its current problems. Money and influence make prisoners come out and enjoy the city, and the same can be said about hiring assassins. A gun for hire would have the ideal job. Imagine still being able to get out of the prison, be paid for a job that he is already trained for, and go back to prison where he will not be hunted by the authorities, and gets to eat three square meals a day at the taxpayer’s expense!  

Having the prison at a very remote area, such as the practice in other countries like the US, would make escaping harder. Those who have the money to temporarily buy their freedom would also have a harder time concealing their illegal excursions. The same can be said about the guns for hire. Everything would just be harder to do, even affecting visitors, which have been proven to be the sources of some of the problems.

It really is time to do something about the NBP. Obviously, even under the Aquino administration, everything bad about the NBP goes on. It is no longer enough to have a good administration running the facility. It has to be torn down, burned even and rebuilt in some no man’s land in the country.

And it has to be done now.