Letter to the Editor — The role of rehabilitation in jails

The role of penology in the country has always been an equation of crime and punishment. That is, crime plus punishment equals rehabilitation and reformation. Also, crime plus punishment plus rehabilitation equals the management of prisons.

The concept of rehabilitation comes with many interpretation and approaches. Gray areas and loopholes abound in jail management as there are many ways to circumvent rehabilitation. At the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, the approach to rehabilitation is aimed at imbibing discipline, physical fitness dismantling the culture of corruption and pre-emptive decongestion. It looks into behavioral change and culture right inside the microcosm of a sick society, which is, the jail.

It is actually inside jails or so-called rehabilitation centers that societal decadence are magnified. Drug trafficking, smuggling, addiction, politics of the toughest and corruption prevail and proliferate in the raw because jail environments provide fertile grounds for these to spread and transmit rapidly. It is like a disease that spares no one, not even the upright. No matter how restrictive regulations may be, inmates and even jail guards tend to find loopholes in an already flawed system, making corruption a never-ending cycle.

Security too looks beyond the physical aspect. While padlocks and sophisticated gadgetry may physically shut off and isolate inmates from the physical world, it doesn't equate security. Security approaches the psyche. It takes one to be mean to tame the mean. Security must be approached not only with physical means but also from the cultural and behavioral context.

In fitness, rehabilitation at CPDRC is such that inmates are required to go through a workout regimen. To keep the body fit in order to keep the mind fit, such may not actually happen if it is not done in a style and manner deemed pleasurable. Music, being the language of the soul, is added to that regimen.

Decadent cultures in jails are only spillovers of the cultures outside the walls. In approaching at behavioral and cultural change, one has to look at the decadence of society in the outside world to change the culture from the inside. To do away with inmate and jail guard politics, rehabilitation must employ divide and rule. This method is meant to discourage organization among inmates, where inherently gang culture exists. Here lies the blunder.

Penology or jail management in this country has never looked at gang culture in jails as one that actually propagates corruption and decadent culture. In most cases, jail authorities support and tolerate gang culture to breed, without considering that gang culture actually impedes rehabilitation. The existence of gang breeds corruption and corruption breeds enmity and animosity among inmates or between inmates and guards.

The divide and rule approach aims to change or reform gang culture and diffuse possibilities of inmates organizing themselves into confrontation groups.

To prevent familiarity between inmates and guards, security is done in four component forces. Capitol Civil Security Forces conduct surprise greyhound operations at the jail and inspect visitors during scheduled visiting days. There are jail guards who have direct contact with the inmates, there are members of the Provincial Security Group who escort inmates to and from Court hearings and there are blue guards who check on the three security components at the entrance of the facility. While the old practice of jail guards won't die, a four-tiered check-and-balance approach among jail guards is seen to plug the gaps for the corruption at the core.

To do away with corruption on jail finances, budgets are allocated and released directly from the treasury of the Capitol. Fund management especially on food is taken away from jail authorities.

Inmates too are deprived of having cash in their hands. Money is considered illegal. Included in rehabilitation is providing a system where inmates can entrust their cash and converted to purchase orders with jail authorities. This is to do away with money being used for illegal purchase of contraband that might have been smuggled inside, and to discourage gambling.

CPDRC has taken the very simple approach to jail decongestion, that is, to pre-empt over-crowding by shutting its doors once it reaches full capacity. What seems to be contemptuous and arrogant at first, would prove to be admirable and humbling in the end, for it should be the general welfare and security of the occupants inside the jail that should be given utmost consideration to achieve true rehabilitation. Jails in our country are congested because penology chose it to be.

True rehabilitation of penology in this country may take revolutionary change in policies and approaches. At CPDRC the experience of responsive rehabilitation has proven that the revolutionary change can be done from within.

Byron F. Garcia, CSP
Consultant on Security
Cebu Provincial Government