EDITORIAL - Watch our prisons

Just recently six inmates were killed while 33 others were injured in a riot at the Caloocan City Jail. Police believe the riot stemmed from either rivalry between gangs in the jail or the smuggling of contraband.

"The PNP will also look at the presence of various opposing gangs inside the jail facility that may have started the riot because those who died belong to different groups," PNP chief Police General Dionardo Carlos was quoted as saying in a report.

This should be a wakeup call for authorities to be more mindful of the situation in our prisons. If it happened in one jail it may happen in others.

Of course, it can be forgiven if our authorities have not been looking at our prisons more closely. What has most of our attention is the ongoing global pandemic as well as the coming local and national election, one of the most crucial in our history.

As it stands right most of our prisons aren’t really places to rehabilitate criminals. Quite the contrary, it is where they learn to become even better criminals, establishing contacts and learning “tricks of the trade” from others who are there.

It is where they become even tougher and more hardened. If the streets were a school of hard knocks for some criminals, prison is the post-graduate course.

In some prisons it is even the inmates who hold sway. The richer ones have turned some of them into a virtual country club, smuggling in luxury items, appliances, and even furniture.

Worse, many inmates actually run their drug operations from prison, a fact that was confirmed by several arrested drug suspects. It’s ironic that a prison is actually the safest place one can run a drug business; the best place to hide something is in plain sight after all.

Our prisons are supposed to be places where criminals get rehabilitated and rejoin society as better individuals, but right now they are just places where inmates are made even more aware of the desperation of their situation and learn how to take advantage of others.