Philippines: Humane approach to incarceration alleviates chronic prison overcrowding

At the Manila City Jail in the Philippine capital, inmates lie down in orderly rows as they demonstrate how they sleep every night.

In the men’s dormitory number four, most have no mattress or bed; in fact, it is not even possible to lie on your back due to lack of space. The inmates, in their regulation yellow T-shirts, curl up on their sides, often using their nearest neighbor as a pillow, while They struggle to sleep properly in damp, cramped conditions.

Carlo has been in prison for six years and is awaiting trial. During a UN News visit to the prison, Carlo said that “men sleep in rows of about 200 at the end of the dormitory, and it is difficult to move around,” adding: “Although it is not comfortable, over the years I have become accustomed to sleeping on my side. To people outside it may seem depressing, but comfort is a relative term.”

A recent record-breaking heatwave in Manila has seen temperatures in this shared dormitory exceed 40 degrees Celsius at night, making conditions even more inhumane for the inmates. Carlo experiences “constant insomnia.”

Slowly but surely

The Manila City Jail was originally built in 1847, during the Spanish colonial era, in the densely urbanized barrio of Santa Cruz, and is one of the oldest prisons in the Philippines.

Currently, its official capacity is just under 1,200 inmates, although there are about 3,200 men housed, which means 168% overcrowding.

The prison superintendent, Mayor Lino Montano Soriano, has been in charge of reducing the inmate population to the extent that his responsibilities allow. Since taking over the prison, he has instructed his deputy “to check all the prisoners’ files, because he presumed that many of them already had a planned release date.”

Guard Lino Montano Soriano works at the Manila prison in the Philippines.

Progress in reducing the crowds is slow, but moving in the right direction. In March 2024, 288 prisoners were admitted to the prison, while 354 were released.

Bureaucracy is far from the main reason for overcrowding in Philippine detention centres. A controversial justice policy targeting drug dealers and drug users contributed significantly to the prison population in the Philippines increasing from 95,000 to more than 165,000 between 2015 and 2021.

The Philippines now has one of the most congested prison systems in the world and, with an overall pre-trial prison occupancy rate of 322% (up from 365% in 2023), ranks close to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and Uganda in terms of overcrowding.

Many detainees must endure long periods of pretrial detention before having their day in court or being released without trial.

Philippine prisons are among the most overcrowded in the world.

Significant effort by the authorities

Judge Maria Filomena Singh sits on the Supreme Court of the Philippines and has pledged to improve prison conditionswhich crucially includes decongestion.

She has also regularly visited women’s prisons: “They are mothers, they are daughters, they are wives and I identify with them,” she told UN News, adding that “we cannot call ourselves a just and humane society if there are people living like that among us.”

Philippine authorities are reducing incarceration rates in several ways.

Prisoners aged 70 and over are being given priority release, with others able to have their sentences reduced through good behaviour, but also through an innovative programme linking a commitment to reading activities to earlier release.

It is significant the effort being made to keep people out of jail in the first placereducing the number of people in pre-trial detention and imprisoning people only for the most serious crimes.

“Of all the people detained in our prisons, around 70% have not yet completed their trial. They are therefore there on remand, even though their crimes are not serious,” said Judge Singh.

“These people have not yet been proven guilty, and yet we do not treat them any differently than those who have already been convicted.”

Another priority has been to reduce payments to secure bail while awaiting trial. Other changes are being made to criminal procedures to keep people out of jail where they are “literally unproductive,” a situation in which families who depend on the incarcerated person “are deprived of their livelihood,” the judge explained.

Inmates can also appear online from some prisonswhich is helping to speed up the typically slow legal proceedings.

Prisoner records in Manila Jail, Philippines.

The war on drugs

About 70% of all people incarcerated in the Philippines are there for drug offensessometimes minor, as a result of the previous administration’s punitive war on drugs.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has supported measures to implement bail reductions, priority release of older prisoners and the reading-to-get-out-of-court programme, and has prioritised supporting the Government to change its overall approach to drug-related crime.

According to Daniele Marchesi, UNODC’s head in the Philippines, “drugs are not only a law enforcement issue, but also a health problem that must be considered from the perspective of prevention and rehabilitation.”

“It is a complex problem,” Marchesi added, “which connects the judiciary, the police and other law enforcement agencies on issues such as health, drug policy and human rights,” he said.

Complexity requires what Supreme Court Justice Filomena Singh calls “an intersectional approach.”

That approach appears to be paying off, with some 8,000 prisoners released in the past year, according to Judge Singh.

Carlo, from Manila City Jail, is one of those who hopes to soon be among the growing number of released inmates: “I love my life on the outside; I miss dating and movies,” he said.