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STORY: UNODC / PRISON REFORM IN THE PHILIPPINES
TRT: 05:04
SOURCE: UNODC
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: VARIOUS, 2024, PHILIPPINES
MARAWI CITY, PHILIPPINES
1. Wide shot, checkpoint entrance to Marawi City, Philippines
2. Various drone shots, site of the 2017 siege by violent extremists, Marawi City, Philippines
3. Various shots, soldiers amid the damage from the 2017 siege by violent extremists, Marawi City, Philippines
MANILA CITY, PHILIPPINES
4. Med shot, Manila City Jail entrance
5. Tilt shot, Manila City Jail prisoners lying side by side (blurred to protect identities)
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Daniele Marchesi, Country Manager, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Philippines Office:
“It's really a general systemic issue that there is here in the Philippines, which is very much, is very much connected, of course, with the issue of drugs, of the drug policy, which in the past has been very punitive, very much focused on enforcement and very much focused also on small-level drug cases and often also drug use, not only drug trafficking. This has led to the whole criminal justice system focusing very much on imprisoning or incarcerating small-level users and this has, over time, over the years, created a huge problem of overcrowding.
7. Pan shot, Manila City Jail prisoners lying side by side (blurred to protect identities)
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Daniele Marchesi, Country Manager, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Philippines Office:
“In the Philippines, we found and we're finding a very open government, at the moment, let's say, to work on this topic. It might have not been the same a few years ago but at the moment there's quite a lot of engagement and openness in reforming this approach and this policy.
9. SOUNDBITE (English) “Carlo,” Name changed to protect his identity:
“I sleep in a dormitory with 200 people in one line. The dormitory is crowded. It’s very, very uncomfortable for us. I was constantly having insomnia.”
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Daniele Marchesi, Country Manager, UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Philippines Office:
“I think the average is the 300 percent overcrowding, but in some facilities, it goes to 1,000 percent. So, there are ten times more people than what are supposed to be that that specific facility.”
11. Wide shot, Supreme Court of the Philippines
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Justice Maria Filomena Singh, Supreme Court of the Philippines:
“There is an effort now to revise the penal code, that is the criminal code. It codifies all the laws penalizing offences and crimes in the country. It has taken two decades to finish that work. It's in Congress now. Hopefully it will come out soon and they will have a better regime of penalizing offenses because now it will include alternatives like community service. So, it's really related to what we're doing with decongestion because we are offering other ways of penalizing offenders rather than just keep on imprisoning them with no real benefits, because we see that our penal system is corrective or rehabilitative. We don't see that. Where is that? Where do you see the corrections side of it? So that's what's missing. And hopefully, through the concerted efforts of all the actors—the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary—there will be a unified approach to this so that we can reduce admissions into our jails, increase releases and at the same time focus on rehabilitation.”
MARAWI CITY, PHILIPPINES
13. Zoom shot, New Marawi Jail unveiling of plaque on the Nelson Mandela Rules
14. Pan shot, New Marawi Jail bars
15. Tilt shot, New Marawi Jail beds
16. Wide shot, New Marawi Jail warden shooting baskets
The conditions in detention facilities in the Philippines, which have been described as “inhumane” by one of the country’s Supreme Court Justices, are expected to improve dramatically as the Southeast Asian nation moves towards adopting rules which focus on the human rights and dignity of prisoners and recommend the minimum standard of treatment across detention facilities.
The Nelson Mandela Rules, named after the former South African president who was unjustly incarcerated for 27 years, are playing a key part in prison and penal reform in the Philippines.
At Manila City Jail, some 3,200 men are accommodated in a facility with a capacity of 1200, with men “sleeping like sardines,” according to the Supreme Court’s Associate Justice Maria Filomena Singh, a situation she has described as “inhumane.”
The jail, which houses mainly people in pre-trial detention, was built in 1867. Temperatures in the crowded dormitories can reach up to 40 centigrade and so do not meet the Rules requirements of “due regard being paid to climatic conditions and particularly to cubic content of air, minimum floor space, lighting, heating and ventilation.”
The Philippines’ newest prison, the Marawi City Jail in Mindanao, was built with the Rules in mind and inaugurated in May 2024. It replaces the city’s old jail which was destroyed in a five-month siege by violent extremists in 2017.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which is the official custodian of the Rules, provided technical support to the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology during the process of establishing the right conditions for the new facility including reviewing the infrastructure design, setting up a library, security training and prisoner assessment.
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