Freedom and Death Inside the Jail.pdf - The Action Program for ...

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Freedom and Death Inside The Jail
and implement construction/repair projects. They help maintain
the Jail’s facilities (e.g., clean the comfort rooms), prepare the
food, perform medical and paralegal services, and even act as
personal aides to officers.
In turn, management allows inmates to freely engage in certain
activities, such as operating businesses inside the Jail. They are
free to cook their own food. Affluent inmates can employ buyuneros
as their personal aides. Inmates have their own system of governance.
The mayor de mayores, the most powerful individual in
the political hierarchy of inmates, is so much like a town mayor.
He is revered by inmates and is given absolute control over the
resources, i. e., he decides when, where, and how the brigade’s
funds are spent.
Apparently, the relationship between management and inmates
is one that is based on patron-client interdependence. One characteristic
of this relationship is the discretionary (as opposed to
compulsory) implementation of the Jail’s policies. Management
circumvents its own policies to accommodate the activities of
inmates.
In Western countries, such relationship between management
and inmates seems unthinkable. To begin with, inmates there do
not clean the comfort rooms or serve as personal aides to jail officers
or to fellow inmates. This is because Western inmates are
aware of their rights. They are aware, for example, that they are
entitled to properly cooked and served food and so they demand
it. If their demands are not met, inmates fight for these and can be
violent and assault jail officers or fellow inmates. In Quezon City
Jail, demanding and complaining are simply not the way things
are done. These could put inmates in trouble for they would be
seen as wala sa hulog, or are out to embarrass the management.
It is a sacred code in Quezon City Jail that utmost respect be accorded
jail officers and inmate leaders for this is the one code
that enables management to keep inmates in check and hold
everything in balance.
An inadequate budget allocation from the national government
leaves Quezon City Jail management not much choice but to utilize
the inmates’ human and financial resources. The increasing
inmate population makes it difficult for management to provide
even for the basic needs of inmates. Overpopulation inside the
Jail simply overwhelms it of its resources.
One manifestation of such a peculiar situation is the presence
of a black market inside the Jail. The Jail has a small marketplace
where inmates can enjoy the services of food stalls, magazine
and pocketbook stands, a billiard hall, a videoke bar, a barbershop
and beauty salon, a gym, and a cooperative store. It is these
establishments that provide for the needs of inmates—for a fee,
of course.