EDITORIAL - A closer look at jail guards

An incident the other day provided one answer to the perennial question: How do prohibited items keep getting into our jails? This after a jail guard was arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle contraband into the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center.

According to reports, jail guard Paul Riches Bacayo, 37, of Mohon, Talisay City, was found with a 25-gram pack of suspected shabu worth P170,000, cash worth ?900, tobacco, and a Galaxy 11 cellphone when he reported for duty last Wednesday. He did not expect that his fellow guards would frisk him.

We say one answer to the question because we are sure there are other answers. We are sure detainees have other ways of getting things inside the jail that should be kept out.

But, really, who better to bring items into the jail than a jail guard? He is someone who works there who has access to the outside. He isn’t usually frisked when he enters the jail. He is normally beyond suspicion of such an act.

Now we have to pose several questions.

How was the jail guard persuaded to bring in the prohibited items? What was promised or threatened? Who were the contraband for? And are other jail guards doing the same thing? We have no answers for the first three questions but venture we know the answer to the last. Although not all, there have to be other jail guards doing the same out there, otherwise how are our jails still teeming with drugs and prohibited items.

Bacayo may have just been careless, other guards may have more sophisticated ways or clandestine methods to smuggle prohibited items in instead of just trying to smuggle them in the way Bacayo did.

If proven guilty, Bacayo might soon find out how it feels to be on the other side of prison bars.

Our prisons continue to be havens for criminal operations, and it bugs us to no end to think that some jail guards --people who are supposed to keep watch over prisoners-- may have a hand in its operations.

It’s time for a closer look at our jail guards, both literally and figuratively.