Speaking of prisons

All the talk comparing the quality of the prison where Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla are detained for plunder, with the filthy chicken coops where most other inmates all over the country stay, should result in at least one thing — a bigger budget for penitentiaries and higher standards of quality for our prison system.

I have yet to see a prison or detention center in our country that shows respect for the humanity of its inmates who aren’t erring public officials.

There was a time when our prisons were humane places where citizens who went astray could be reformed and rehabilitated. That is why they were called correctional institutes.

My family grew up in the prison system. My grandfather, Eriberto B. Misa Sr., worked in the national penitentiary from the time his children were toddlers. Later, he became superintendent in the penal colonies in San Ramon in Zamboanga and Iwahig in Palawan. Finally, he became director of prisons, a post he held before the war, through the Japanese occupation, until he died in 1949.

My mother and her siblings grew up in idyllic San Ramon and Iwahig. When my grandfather was assigned to run the Bilibid Prison in Manila, they lived in the director’s quarters adjacent to the prison compound. As my elders recalled, it was a good place to be, where the family was secure, even in close proximity to the prison dormitories. Pictures of the Old Bilibid show the dormitory buildings neatly laid out like a sunburst, and disciplined prisoners clad in clean uniforms ended the day in formation to salute the flag.

When the New Bilibid Prison was transferred to Muntinlupa, my Lolo and his family moved to the new directors’ quarters. Muntinglupa was a spacious compound with housing for the employees, schools for their children, churches, stores, and a golf course. The prison facility stood close by, behind a fortress-like façade.

Two of my older siblings were born in the prison hospital in Muntinlupa during the war years.  And it was from Muntinlupa where my grandfather evacuated 100 members of his extended family, including household help, to Marinduque in the last year of the war, after the Japanese authorities got wise to his underground activity allowing Filipino guerrilla prisoners to escape en masse.

In the ‘50s, the family returned to Muntinlupa, when my uncle, Eriberto B. Misa Jr., was appointed assistant director of prisons. As a child, I spent weekends sleeping over with my cousins at the assistant director’s quarters. We played house, cooking with our play clay pots, climbed aratiles trees for their fruit, and went biking in the compound. Muntinlupa was my weekend paradise.

The help in my uncle’s house were called “trustees,” living-out prisoners who were assigned as domestic helpers while awaiting their release. They cooked, cleaned, washed, ironed, gardened, served at table, and were virtual nannies to the children. I didn’t know they were convicts. They were just part of the household. I later learned that one of them was completing his sentence for rape. He was a jolly fellow, very attentive and caring, and we all liked him. He went on to serve the family loyally and well, even after he was released.

My grandfather firmly believed in the correctional system. He saw to it that the national penitentiary was an institution from where convicted criminals could emerge as reformed citizens. But he did not allow convicted swindlers in his household. He reasoned that murder and rape were crimes of passion and could happen unbidden. But swindling and stealing requires cunning and premeditation. He would never have allowed Janet Napoles, or Senators Revilla, Estrada, or Enrile to serve in his home. 

When my grandfather died, he was buried with high honors on a hill in the center of the golf course. A cannon marked the spot and underneath it was his tombstone, which bore the epitaph: “He made prison life bearable.”

In the late ‘80s, my uncle, Bert Misa, was appointed director of prisons by President Cory Aquino, and the family was happy to go home to Muntinlupa once more. The director’s quarters still made for a grand house, perfect for our frequent family gatherings. There was corruption in the system that made my uncle’s job difficult, but he had the respect of the prisoners, and he could bring his children and grandchildren inside the jail, all the way to maximum security, on a tour of the place. 

So you understand why I grew up with a benign view of prisons. 

But Muntinlupa has gone to seed. My grandfather’s grave has been desecrated. It became a drug addicts’ lair, which prompted my aunt to move his remains to a family plot in Davao. Although their portraits hang along with the other directors who have since run the place, my grandfather’s and uncle’s legacies have been forgotten. The filth, overcrowding, and corruption would make the directors Misa turn in their graves.

The Old Bilibid compound is now Manila City Jail, a rat hole where thousands of prisoners live like vermin, packed into dormitories where they sleep by turns on whatever space they can lie on. The place is a hovel, jammed with desperate men, many of whom have been waiting way beyond their expected sentences for their cases to be concluded. The compound is hemmed in by squatters whose hovels are built right up to the top of the prison walls. 

But there is hope. With Senators Revilla and Estrada in jail, and Senator Enrile (who probably won’t see a day in detention, but only because he’s too old) scheduled for arrest, our other legislators must now realize that they too could wind up behind bars. If nothing else, this should be a strong incentive for them to improve the prison system, by providing it with more resources and requiring expertise in penology from those who are appointed to run it.