EDITORIAL - The Bilibid Ritz-Carlton

Carpeted floors. Air conditioning and flat-screen TV, with electricity charged to taxpayers. Even a sauna and Jacuzzi.

Butler service is probably available for the pampered inmates of the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa. Some human rights advocates may applaud the heights of comfort enjoyed by NBP prisoners. The five-star accommodations, however, are enjoyed only by a privileged few who are either masters at evading detection by prison guards, or who can afford to pay off their jailers.

The second reason appears to be more plausible. In all prisons worldwide, especially at maximum security facilities, head counts and inspections of the detention cells are conducted at least twice a day. NBP personnel – if they inspect at all – have to be doing it with their eyes closed, for them to miss the plush accommodations of VIP inmates.

Approval of NBP and Bureau of Corrections authorities is also needed for inmates to enjoy not just access to public phones but also their own smartphones in their cells. If you’ve got it, use it; several inmates are suspected of using the phones to continue running the illegal activities for which they landed behind bars. After all, what else can the government do to them – throw them in jail for drug dealing?

For some time now, anti-narcotics officials have complained that drug trafficking in Metro Manila is being operated from within the National Penitentiary. When law enforcement teams from agencies outside the BuCor raided the NBP the other day, they hauled away a cache of shabu, high-powered guns and more than P2 million in cash.

With inmates flush with cash, it’s not surprising that they are also allowed regular medical furloughs in top private hospitals, with starlets brought into their rooms for entertainment.

Whether the reason is negligence and incompetence or corruption on the part of prison authorities, sanctions are called for. The tuwid na daan or straight path must go beyond mere expressions of outrage over this sorry state of corrections.