142,000 held in Philippine jails built for 20,000 as Duterte’s drug war intensifies
About 30 per cent of the current population consists of convicted drug offenders
The Philippine government’s war on drugs, which was started nearly a year ago by President Rodrigo Duterte, has not only resulted in the deaths of thousands of defiant suspected drug dealers, but also left jails swelling with more inmates and more legal cases piling up.
At a recent forum about the condition of Philippine jails and prisons, Paulino Moreno Jnr of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology said more than 142,000 people, as of last month, are detained across the country, many of them awaiting trial. Around 64 per cent of these detainees are charged with violating the illegal drugs law.
The country’s 466 jails have an ideal combined capacity of only around 20,400 individuals, and are only manned by no more than 12,000 personnel.
“Our statistics show that that’s really the trend - that most of the cases coming in are because of the law enforcement focus on illegal drugs (under the current) administration,” Moreno said as he acknowledged the “war on drugs” as “the major contributor to the congestion.”
A previous population data report of Moreno’s agency covering until the end of January this year placed the number of detainees at nearly 132,000.
Watch: a close-up view of Duterte’s war on drugs