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

Fig. 1.1 The Philippine Penal System
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Freedom and Death Inside The Jail
for nearly the same length of time. Some inmates prefer to finish
their sentence in the detention center because transferring to the
jail would mean a lot of adjustment on their part. Or perhaps the
inmates have already endeared themselves to the police authorities
by becoming “trustees” (or personal aides to the officers). As
a result, the detention center which is supposedly a temporary
holding area becomes a venue for serving the full-term sentence
of inmates. Accordingly, detainees are called prisoners or preso.
Once the court issues an order to transfer the accused to the jail,
a certificate of detention should be issued to the inmate, stating
the length of his stay in the detention center. Should the inmate
be convicted, the length of his stay in the detention center would
be deducted from the number of years the court has ordered him
to serve in jail. Not all detainees, however, are sent to jail. Some
of them are able to post bail while others secure an out-of-court
settlement with the complainant. In some instances, the prosecutors
are not able to establish probable cause for lack of evidence
and the case is dismissed.
The second tier in the penal institution is the jail. There are
five kinds of jails based on territorial jurisdiction—municipal, city,
district, provincial, and sub-provincial. All in all, there is a total of
1,344 jails in the country. Ideally, the Bureau of Jail Management
and Penology (BJMP) has jurisdiction over the 1,003 municipal,
135 district, and 83 city jails. Due to limitations in personnel and
budget, however, more than half of the municipal jails (747 of the
1,003) are still managed by the PNP.