EDITORIAL - Challenge to the straight path

Maybe we’ve been watching too many movies. In other countries, visiting privileges for prisoners are highly limited and strictly monitored. Upon returning to their cells after meeting with visitors, the prisoners are thoroughly searched.

In this country, visiting privileges are so abused prisoners can even enjoy the services of prostitutes in their air-conditioned villas and run drug trafficking operations around the country. And a young girl can be nearly raped in the prison toilet by an inmate while her mother is spending time with her incarcerated father.

The kid-glove treatment is enjoyed by VIP inmates not only at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa but also, it seems, even when they are transferred to the detention facilities of the National Bureau of Investigation. During the holiday break, an inspection of the NBI facilities holding 19 prisoners transferred from the NBP yielded P700,000 in cash concealed in garbage bins and toilet fixtures. When NBI agents threatened to donate the cash to charity, four of the most notorious convicts claimed ownership of the money.

Where did the money come from, what were they meant for, and how did the prisoners manage to get hold of the cash? Maybe the prisoners, most of them convicted of drug offenses, planned to order their meals from five-star hotels nearby. Investigators suspect that the convicts, among them drug dealer Amin Imam Boratong and budding recording artist Herbert Colangco, planned to use the money to bribe their jailers.

The 19 prisoners, most of them facing life terms, probably believe they have  nothing to lose if they continue breaking the law from behind bars. They have turned the NBP and the Bureau of Corrections into a laughingstock, and are now threatening to do the same to the NBI.

Despite the relief of several prison officials, the government continues to look either unwilling or unable to discipline both the VIP prisoners and their jailers. The corrupting power of drug money is a direct challenge to the resolve of the straight path or daang matuwid to clean up government.