The Inter­na­tional Com­mit­tee of the Red Cross(ICRC) has been work­ing with national author­i­ties to address the causes of over­crowd­ing in pris­ons and jails and its effect on inmates’ liv­ing con­di­tions and health. This is an update on these and other ICRC activ­i­ties car­ried out in the Philip­pines in Jan­u­ary 2010.

Improv­ing con­di­tions of detention

“Deten­tion vis­its are the back­bone of our oper­a­tions in the Philip­pines, a coun­try which has expe­ri­enced decades of inter­nal armed con­flicts,” said Jean-Daniel Tauxe, the ICRC’s head of del­e­ga­tion in Manila. “We have seen that the over­crowd­ing of jails and pris­ons has seri­ous con­se­quences on detainees’ liv­ing con­di­tions and health. Our usual prac­tice of rec­om­mend­ing improve­ments and pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port to the detain­ing author­i­ties was not enough, so we devel­oped a new, com­ple­men­tary strat­egy. In part­ner­ship with gov­ern­ment offi­cials and national agen­cies, we are plan­ning and imple­ment­ing changes for the ben­e­fit of all detainees.”

Through­out 2009, the ICRC car­ried out 234 vis­its to over 66,000 detainees held in 139 places of deten­tion. Together with the Philip­pine National Red Cross, the ICRC facil­i­tated fam­ily vis­its for 312 inmates held far from their homes.

Access to safe water, san­i­ta­tion, health care and accept­able liv­ing con­di­tions is a major prob­lem in over­crowded deten­tion facil­i­ties. Last year, the ICRC:

• car­ried out ren­o­va­tion projects ben­e­fit­ing more than 11,000 inmates in 22 jails;
• sup­plied med­ical items and equip­ment to seven prison infir­maries and pro­vided over 120 detainees need­ing imme­di­ate access to health care with the help they required;
• pro­vided instruc­tion for over 60 peo­ple in inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized stan­dards relat­ing to water, san­i­ta­tion, hygiene and liv­ing con­di­tions gen­er­ally in jails;
• assisted almost 2,000 detainees in four pris­ons affected by flood­ing in the after­math of trop­i­cal storm Ondoy.

Another seri­ous con­cern in over­crowded deten­tion facil­i­ties is the spread of tuber­cu­lo­sis (TB). “World­wide, tuber­cu­lo­sis is one of the lead­ing causes of ill­ness and death among inmates, and this is par­tic­u­larly true in coun­tries with a high TB preva­lence,” said Dr Robert Pater­son, an ICRC health coor­di­na­tor. Over­crowd­ing, an unhealthy man­ner of liv­ing and insuf­fi­cient ven­ti­la­tion are among the fac­tors that spread the dis­ease among inmates. “You can­not keep TB behind bars: it read­ily escapes to affect the wider com­mu­nity, so con­trol­ling TB in jails is fun­da­men­tal to pro­tect­ing the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion against the illness.”

Con­cerns about the spread of TB have prompted the ICRC to help imple­ment the national tuber­cu­lo­sis pro­gramme, involv­ing 30,000 inmates in seven pilot jails and pris­ons, in coop­er­a­tion with the national agen­cies con­cerned and the World Health Organization.

Legal and pro­ce­dural prob­lems, which delay the pro­cess­ing of cases, are the root cause of over­crowd­ing. Bring­ing together those who can address these issues is essen­tial to find­ing durable solu­tions. A pilot project guided by this prin­ci­ple took place in Manila City Jail at the end of 2009. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the var­i­ous agen­cies involved in pro­cess­ing inmates’ files reviewed the most urgent cases, iden­ti­fied hur­dles within the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and pro­vided means of over­com­ing them. As a result, a back­log of 250 cases was cleared. The strat­egy will expand to other jails in 2010.

The results of sev­eral ini­tia­tives address­ing var­i­ous aspects of jail con­ges­tion as well as sug­ges­tions for the future will be dis­cussed at a national con­fer­ence due to take place in Manila in March. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Bureau of Jail Man­age­ment and Penol­ogy, the Bureau of Cor­rec­tions, the Supreme Court, the Depart­ment of Health and other national agen­cies will be attending.

via Philip­pines: pro­tect­ing life and dig­nity in places of deten­tion.

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