Prison Matters - In Celebration of the UNODC - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Mandela Rules

There are things we take for granted in this country. The hum of traffic at EDSA. The sigh of the monsoon wind. The collective shrug when another convict dies in a jail cell he shouldn’t have even been in. We look away. We move on. After all, prison is for the guilty, right? The irredeemable. The lost.

But the latest United Nations global report on prisons, released at the tail end of 2023, tells us something else. That the prison population has reached a staggering 11.7 million globally. That over 3.7 million souls are in limbo—languishing in pre-trial detention, unconvicted, unheard, unresolved. That while the prisons of Europe are learning to balance gender and staff capacities, the rest of the world—especially in Africa and the Americas—is drowning in overcrowding and systemic neglect. And let’s not kid ourselves. The Philippines, our beloved archipelago, is not spared.

We’re part of that swelling number. We contribute to the figures, not because we are particularly criminal as a people, but because our systems are particularly broken. Our jails, particularly under the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), are bursting at the seams. We have 258% congestion rate. Cells made for ten house thirty, sometimes fifty. Men sleep in shifts, like factory workers. Women cradle children in holding cells. Juveniles sit beside hardened adults. This is not a bug in the system. This is the system.

Yet the Mandela Rules—the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners—speak of another possibility. A vision of prison as a place not of punishment alone, but of transformation. Not a warehouse of broken men, but a crucible of reimagination and reintegration. And contrary to what many think, that vision is not entirely alien to the Philippine criminal justice community. It’s not utopia. It’s work already being done.

Take the BJMP’s implementation of the Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL) Welfare and Development Program. It's an attempt—however strained—to comply with the spirit of Mandela. They’ve tried to turn jails into makeshift schools, therapy centers, job sites. They’ve opened up the system to vocational training, religious ministry, livelihood projects, even basic literacy classes. It’s not perfect. It’s not enough. But it’s something. For some PDLs, it is everything.

In some jails, I’ve seen officers sacrifice their own comfort to ensure that inmates get medical check-ups. I’ve met jail wardens who negotiate with mayors and governors of Local Government Units (LGUs) for water pipes, rice donations, or medicine for hypertensive detainees. See the work of warden JSUPT Lino Soriano. I've seen probation officers trudge on foot to the mountains of Benguet or the narrow alleys of Tondo just to check on a client’s reintegration plan. Look at the work of Maria Isabel Castillo. This isn’t the bureaucracy. This is the moral underground of decency that still survives in our prisons.

In the Philippine Correctional Institution for Women, I recently reunited with several “ates” I had once been detained with. Many of them, lifers. But lifers no more. They are now mothers, grandmothers, church workers, barangay volunteers. It took decades. But release came. Reintegration, haltingly, happened. Their lives speak louder than any policy paper.

Yet the truth remains: our prisons are unsafe. The threat of violence lingers. The psychological toll is devastating. Suicide attempts go unrecorded. Depression hides in plain sight. The UN is right—rehabilitation requires not just programs but conditions. Space. Safety. Dignity. A chance for the prisoner to imagine another life. And how can that happen when he can’t even breathe?

The UN reminds us that post-release support is crucial. And here, again, the system limps. The Parole and Probation Administration (PPA) does what it can, stretched thin across a nation of islands. Some officers handle over 500 clients. They pay for their own internet, print forms out of pocket, take jeepneys to remote barangays. They persist. It is grit, not budget, that keeps the wheels turning. Hear from Nick Fury stories of grit and courage.

There is wisdom in the UN’s caution about vocational training and psychological programs. Not all of them work. Context is key. You can’t train a man to be a welder if he’s starving, if his mind is broken, if no one will hire an ex-con. Rehabilitation is not just about giving him skills—it’s about giving him chances.

We must stop pretending prisons are the end of the line. They are crossroads. And the choice we offer at that intersection—between despair and hope, between punishment and redemption—reflects not just our policy but our soul as a nation.

Prison matters. Not just because they house the “others” we want to forget, but because they are mirrors. And what we see in them—overcrowding, cruelty, or compassion—is what we choose to become.

The UN has spoken. But our own people—judges who dismiss cases against the innocent, jail officers who treat inmates with dignity, parole officers who walk the extra mile—have spoken louder. These are the true Filipino heroes.

The question is whether we are listening. And more urgently, whether we will act. Before the next statistic is not from the UN, but from our own family. Before the next PDL is not a stranger—but us.