Undermanned, congested jails plague BJMP-6

CEBU, Philippines - The ideal ratio of jail personnel to inmates is 1:7, but the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology-Region 6 is now having a 1:40 ratio, which meant the jails in Western Visayas are congested with inmates, but these lack the right number of personnel.

Senior Superintendent Rex Delarmente, BJMP-6 regional director, recently disclosed this dire situation, which the Commission on Audit confirmed in its 2014 report released Thursday.

COA reported that Western Visayas has seven jails, each of which were overpopulated by 393 percent, but there were six others that remained unused.

These congested jails were all in Iloilo province, in the towns of Dumangas, Guimbal and Pototan, and in Iloilo City; in Binalbagan and Isabela towns of Negros Occidental; and in Jordan of Guimaras.

In a report by the Philippine Star, COA said each of these government jails has a capacity of 189 inmates only, but then its inmate population had reached to 579.

Ironically, the jail facilities in the towns of Leon, Maasin and New Lucena, all in Iloilo; Libertad in Antique; and Jordan and Nueva Valencia in Guimaras are left unused, even as the government spent P3.294 million to construct these, said the COA.

Delarmente also said there are now only 760 BJMP personnel in Western Visayas, to include Negros Occidental which is now part of Region 18. “So, we really lack manpower. While we hope to hire more jail personnel, it would still not be enough,” he said.

Due to this lack of manpower, Delarmente said BJMP-6 opted to cluster the jail facility. “We need to maximize our personnel, thereby abandoning some jails,” he said, while insisting that these should not be considered “useless.”

The “abandoned” jails are now being utilized by some municipal police stations as their lock-up cells. “Before they could file the case, they first put the inmates at the lock-up cells before turning it to us once there is already a commitment order from the court,” Delarmente said.

In the case of the BJMP District Jail at Barangay Ungka in Jaro district, Iloilo City, Delarmente said the BJMP allotted a budget of P32 million for its improvement, although the city government had plans to look for a bigger site to accommodate future expansion.  (FREEMAN)