ILOILO City – Of the 9,595 inmates in Western Visayas, 62.82 percent have drug-related cases, according to Jail Superintendent Gilbert Peremne, deputy regional director for administration of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP).
The cases of the rest of the inmates varied, among them robbery and theft.
The jail with the most number of inmates with drug cases is the Aklan District Jail Female Dormitory, according to Peremne. All the 39 or 100 percent of the jail’s inmates face drug charges.
Next to the Aklan District Jail Female Dormitory is the Iloilo District Jail Female Dormitory in Barangay Nanga, Pototan, Iloilo. Of its 141 inmates, 140 have drug-related cases, BJMP-6 records showed.
Ranked third is the Iloilo City District Jail Female Dormitory on General Luna Street, Iloilo City. Peremne said 90.16 percent or 220 of its total 244 inmates have drug cases.
But the BJMP statistics is not all that grim. According to Peremne, the inmate population in the region this year is actually lower compared to 2016’s 11,000 when the Philippine National Police (PNP) started its antidrug campaign.
“Three months after the PNP implemented Oplan Tokhang, the number of inmates in the region ballooned,” said Peremne.
The regular transfer of inmates to the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City – some 200 inmates every quarter – contributed to the drop in the region’s inmate population, according to the BJMP official.
Jail overcrowding has been a problem, admitted Peremne.
He placed the jail congestion rate in the region at 400 percent.
“But we are addressing this. BJMP is constructing bigger jails,” he said.
The 37 BJMP prison facilities in the region could only accommodate a maximum of 3,000 inmates in totality, said Peremne, but the current jail population has reached 9,595 already.
This year, BJMP Region 6 is constructing eight new prison facilities, he revealed.
Next year, it hopes to erect nine more, Peremne added./PN
