EDITORIAL - Drug operations center

It may be overcrowded and resources may be meager for proper inmate rehabilitation, which is the thrust of modern penology. But inmates of the New Bilibid Prisons – the facility for convicted felons operated in Muntinlupa by the Department of Justice – enjoy perks denied to their counterparts in many other countries.

While the perks ease the stress of imprisonment and are credited for reducing the risk of riots, the privileges can go overboard, especially when inmates pay off prison personnel. Scandals have erupted over special privileges given to VIP prisoners at the NBP, including prolonged stays in private hospitals outside the prison reservation. 

In the age of smart phones, the perks have also allowed certain inmates to operate businesses outside prison walls from their cells in the NBP. Not surprisingly, some of the businesses are illegal. Police are looking into reports that drug deals in Metro Manila and other parts of the country are being run from within the walls of Bilibid.

Police believe certain notorious drug convicts in the NBP continue to operate their businesses. The suspicion is that this is happening with the knowledge or active connivance of certain personnel of the NBP and possibly the Bureau of Corrections. If they are unaware of the activities, the DOJ, which has jurisdiction over the BuCor, must look into the possibility of incompetence and mismanagement of the prison facility.

The drug scandal comes on the heels of reports that certain high-profile inmates were allowed to be confined in private hospitals outside the NBP, with the prisoners entertained in their rooms by starlets and TV dancers. Among the prisoners were drug convict and Sigue-Sigue Sputnik gang commander Ricardo Camata, bank robbery gang leader Herbert Colangco and Amin Boratong, operator of the drug flea market in Pasig that was dismantled by the police.

Last June the NBP superintendent was sacked over the hospital privileges. This time, anti-narcotics police are pointing to the NBP as the operations center for certain drug trafficking activities.

The operators may no longer be worried about arrest since they are already behind bars and serving life terms. But authorities can go after the operators’ cohorts outside the NBP, prevent their families from benefiting from drug money, and nail down their coddlers in the prison system. The DOJ must clean up this mess.