The congestion has been noted in 463 jails under the BJMP nationwide as of last May, said Inspector Nigel Arellano, chief of the BJMP’s community relations office in Central Luzon during the recent commemoration of the Community Relations Month here.
Arellano furnished Punto with the BJMP’s latest report indicating that at the ideal ratio of 4.7 square meters per inmate, the 463 jails nationwide would accommodate only 18,967 inmates. At present, however, the jails are congested with 105,418 people.
This meant a congestion rate of 456 percent, said the report done last May.
“We have the budget for the construction of more jails, but we do not have the lands. We have been asking local government help for this, but often, the lands they allocated are too far or inaccessible,” Arellano noted.
The report said that Region 4-A which has 53 jails are the most congested at 834 percent, followed by Region 3 with 33 jails with 798 percent congestion.
The other most congested regions are Region 2 with 674 percent congestion, Region 9 with 648 percent, Region 11 with 626 percent, Region 7 with 557 percent, and Region 12 with 534 percent.
Congestion in other regions ranged from 133 to 418 percent, except the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao where jail population was noted at negative 5 percent.
Arellano said that BJMP does not have funds for the purchase of lands.
“There are times that local governments have offered lands in farms with no access roads, or areas which are too far from local courts,” he said.
Arellano said that building new jails in far flung areas too distant from courts where inmates have to be brought for hearings would at times be too dangerous.
In Central Luzon so far, only the local governments of Baliwag and Bocaue have donated acceptable lands for their local jails, he said.
In the case of this capital city, a lot was offered in Barangay Lara where a huge dumpsite intermittently issues smoke. “The inmates would die inhaling smoke there,” he said.
