PHILIPPINE PRISON HISTORY

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Corrections in the Philippines started during the Spanish regime. The main penitentiary was the Old Bilibid Prison in Oroquieta, Manila which was established in 1847 pursuant to Section 1708 of the Revised Administrative Code. It was formally opened by a Royal Decree in 1865. About 4 years later, on august 21, 1869, the San Ramon Prison and Penal Farm in Zamboanga City was established to confine Muslim rebels and recalcitrant political prisoners opposed to the Spanish rule. The facility, which faces Jolo sea, has the Spanish-inspired dormitories and originally sat on a 1,414 hectare property. When the American took over in the 1900s, the Bureau of Prisons was created under the Department of Commerce and Police pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1905 (RA 1407 dated 01 November 1905). San Ramon, which was destroyed during the Spanish-American War, was re-established in 1907 but it was in 01 January 1915 when San Ramon was placed under the auspices of the Bureau of Prisons and started receiving prisoners from Mindanao. Even before San Ramon was rebuilt, the Iuhit Penal Settlement (now Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm) was established by the Americans in 1904 on its present reservation of 28,072 hectares. It was located on the westernmost part of the archipelago and far from the main islands to confine incorrigibles whom the government had found little hope of rehabilitation. It was expanded to 41,007 hectares in 1912 by virtue of Executive Order (E.O. No. 67) issued by the Governor Newton Gilbert on October 15 of the same year. Other Penal colonies were also established. On November 27,1929, the Correctional Institution for Women was created to provide separate facilities for women offenders and to cater to their special needs (Act No. 3579). To date, it is still the lone women's prison in the Philippines. The Davao penal Colony in the Southern Mindanao was opened in 1932 through Act No. 3732. Meanwhile, owing to the increasing number of committals to the Old Bilibid Prison in Manila, the New Bilibid Prison was established in 1935 in a southern suburb called Muntinlupa. The old prison was transformed into a receiving center and as storage facility for farm produce coming from the colonies. It is presently abandoned and placed under the jurisdiction of the Public Estates Authority. After the American occupation, 2 more penal institutions were constituted. The Sablayan Penal Colony in Occidental Mindoro was set up on September 26 1954 through Proclamation No. 72. Leyte Regional Prison, on the other hand,

was established on January 16, 1973 through Proclamation No. 1101 to confine prisoners from the Visayas. To emphasize the new trend in modern penology, the Bureau of Prisons was renamed Bureau of Corrections pursuant to Executive Order No. 292 dated 22 November 1989. The potential of the offender to change and to become an asset to society has been the agency's guiding principle. On the 15th day of March 1995, Proclamation No. 551, declared the last week of October and every year thereafter as "National Correctional Consciousness Week" to create public awareness and participation in the re-integration of prisoners, probationers and parolees into society as productive and law abiding citizens. However, the rising incident of heinous crimes in the Philippines in the years following the EDSA revolt have prompted the Congress to re-impose capital punishment. Republic Act No. 8177 designating death by lethal injection was signed into law on 20 March 1996.

PRISON HISTORY_OTHER COUNTRIES

Prison is just one of a number of sanctions available to the courts to deal with those who commit criminal offences. Imprisonment today is the harshest sanction available, but this has not always been the case. Sanctions for criminal behaviour tended to be public events which were designed to shame the person and deter others; these included the ducking stool, the pillory, whipping, branding and the stocks. At the time the sentence for many other offences was death. Prison tended to be a place where people were held before their trial or while awaiting punishment. It was very rarely used as a punishment in its own right. Men and women, boys and girls, debtors and murderers were all held together in local prisons. Evidence suggests that the prisons of this period were badly maintained and often controlled by negligent prison warders. Many people died of diseases like gaol fever, which was a form of typhus. The most important innovation of this period was the building of the prototype house of correction, the London Bridewell. Houses of correction were originally part of the machinery of the Poor Law, intended to instil habits of industry through prison labour. Most of those held in them were petty offenders, vagrants

and the disorderly local poor. By the end of the 17 century they were absorbed into the prison system under the control of the local Justices of the Peace. 18 Century Although the 18 century has been characterised as the era of the 'Bloody Code' there was growing opposition to the death penalty for all but the most serious crimes. Such severe punishment was counter-productive, as jurors were refusing to find thieves guilty of offences which would lead to their execution. By the mid-18 century imprisonment, with hard labour, was beginning to been seen as a suitable sanction for petty offenders. Transportation was a much-used method for disposing of convicted people. Convicts were shipped to the British colonies like America (until the end of the American War of Independence in 1776), Australia, and Van Diemens Land (Tasmania). Transportation was curtailed at the end of the 18 century. Other sanctions therefore had to be found. The two prominent alternatives were hard labour, and for those unable to do this, the house of correction. This practice lead to the use of prison hulks from 1776 until their phasing out in 1857. Prison hulks were ships which were anchored in the Thames, and at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Those sent to them were employed in hard labour during the day and then loaded, in chains, onto the ship at night. The appalling conditions on the hulks, especially the lack of control and poor physical conditions, eventually led to the end of this practice. But the use of prison hulks did much to persuade public opinion that incarceration, with hard labour, was a viable penalty for crime. In 1777, John Howard (namesake of the Howard League) condemned the prison system as disorganised, barbaric and filthy. He called for wide-ranging reforms including the installation of paid staff, outside inspection, a proper diet and other necessities for prisoners. Jeremy Bentham, and other penal reformers of the time, believed that the prisoner should suffer a severe regime, but that it should not be detrimental to the prisoner's health. Penal reformers also ensured the separation of men and women and that sanitation was improved. In 1791 Bentham designed the 'panopticon'. This prison design allowed a centrally placed observer to survey all the inmates, as prison wings radiated out from this central position. Benthams panopticon became the model for prison building for the next half century.
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In 1799 the Penitentiary Act specified that gaols should be built for one inmate per cell and operate on a silent system with continuous labour. 19 Century The first half of the 19 century represented a watershed in the history of state punishment. Capital punishment was now regarded as an inappropriate sanction for many crimes. The shaming sanctions, like the stocks, were regarded as outdated. By mid-century, imprisonment had replaced capital punishment for most serious offences - except for that of murder. Ideas relating to penal reform were becoming increasingly popular thanks to the work of a few energetic reformers. Many of these ideas were related to the rehabilitation of offenders. Religious groups like the Quakers and the Evangelicals were highly influential in promoting ideas of reform through personal redemption. The 19 century saw the birth of the state prison. The first national penitentiary was completed at Millbank in London, in 1816. It held 860 prisoners, kept in separate cells, although association with other prisoners was allowed during the day. Work in prison was mainly centred around simple tasks such as picking 'coir' (tarred rope) and weaving. In 1842 Pentonville prison was built using the panopticon design; this prison is still used today. Pentonville was originally designed to hold 520 prisoners, each held in a cell measuring 13 feet long, 7 feet wide and 9 feet high. Pentonville operated the separate system, which was basically solitary confinement. In the next 6 years, 54 new prisons were built using this template. In 1877 prisons were brought under the control of the Prison Commission. For the first time even local prisons were controlled centrally. At this time prison was seen primarily as a means to deter offending and reoffending. This was a movement away form the reforming ideals of the past. The Prison Act 1898 reasserted reformation as the main role of prison regimes. This Act can be seen to set the penal-welfare context which underlies todays prison policy. It led to a dilution of the separate system, the abolition of hard labour, and established the idea that prison labour should be productive, not least for the prisoners, who should be able to earn their livelihood on release. 20 Century The development of the prison system continues. At the end of the 19 century there was recognition that young people should have separate prison establishments - thus the borstal system was introduced in the Prevention of
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Crime Act 1908. Borstal training involved a regime based on hard physical work, technical and educational instruction and a strong moral atmosphere. A young person in borstal would work through a series of grades, based on privileges, until release. In 1933, the first open prison was built at New Hall Camp near Wakefield. The theory behind the open prison is summed up in the words of one penal reformer, Sir Alex Paterson: "You cannot train a man for freedom under conditions of captivity". The Criminal Justice Act 1948 abolished penal servitude, hard labour and flogging. It also presented a comprehensive system for the punishment and treatment of offenders. Prison was still at the centre of the system, but the institutions took many different forms including remand centres, detention centres and borstal institutions. In April 1993 the Prison Service became an Agency of government. This new status allows for greater autonomy in operational matters, while the government retains overall policy direction. The 1990s have also seen the introduction of prisons which are designed, financed, built and run by private companies. Supporters of privatisation argue that it will lead to cheaper, more innovative prisons, while organisations like the Howard League argue that private prisons are flawed both in principle and in practice. 21 Century There are currently 137 prisons holding men, women and children in England and Wales. The supremacy of imprisonment as a way of dealing with offending behaviour shows no signs of abating. Two new prisons are currently planned. These like all new prisons will be part of the PFI programmes and managed by the private sector. There are currently nine privately managed prisons, however two prisons which began life managed by the private sector have been brought back into public management. The prison estate includes one prison ship, HMP The Weare, moored off Portland, Dorset. There has been speculation that another is planned. The fastest growing area of the prison estate is the womens prisons. Prisons like Send in Surrey have had to change their function from holding men to cope with the increasing number of women prisoners. Two centuries ago, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania became the center of prison reform worldwide. To understand how this happened, one must look briefly at the early development of penal practices in William Penns colony. Penn, who himself had been confined in England for his Quaker beliefs, abolished the Duke
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of Yorks severe criminal code which was in effect in other parts of British North America, where, among other offenses, the penalty of death was applied for murder, denying "the true God," homosexual acts and kidnapping. Severe physical punishments were used for what were considered lesser crimes. Pennsylvanias Quaker-inspired code abolished the death penalty for all crimes except murder, using instead imprisonment with labor and fines. The law did call for severe penalties for sexual offenses: "defiling the marriage bed" was to be punished by whipping plus a one year sentence for the first offense, life imprisonment for the second. Upon Penns death, conservative factions in the American colony and in England reintroduced many of the more sanguinary punishments. As late as 1780, punishments such as the pillory and hanging were carried out in public. An account of an execution that year related how two prisoners "were taken out amidst a crowd of spectators they walked after a cart in which were two coffins and a ladder, etc., each had a rope about his neck and their arms tied behin [sic] them they were both hanged in the commons of this city [Philadelphia] abt. [sic.] 1 oclock." Jails up until the time of the American Revolution were used largely for persons awaiting trial and other punishments and for debtors and sometimes witnesses. In the Old Stone Jail at Third and Market Streets in Philadelphia, old and young, black and white, men and women were all crowded together. Here, as in other county jails in Pennsylvania at the time, it was a common custom for the jailer or sheriff to provide a bar, charging inflated prices to the prisoners for spirits. In Chester County, the English custom of charging for various other services was also in force, e.g. fees for locking and unlocking cells, food, heat, clothing, and for attaching and removing irons incident to a court appearance. In 1776, Richard Wistar, Sr., a Quaker, had soup prepared in his home to be distributed to the inmates in Philadelphia prisons, many of whom were suffering from starvation at the time and even several deaths. Wistar formed the Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners, but with the British occupation of the city the next year, the organization was disbanded. Because of the rapidly growing population, a new jail was begun in 1773 on Walnut Street, behind the State House (later, Independence Hall). The new prison had the traditional layout of large rooms for the inmates. Initially, conditions were little better than they had been at the old jail. Prisoners awaiting trial might barter their clothes for liquor or be forcibly stripped upon entering by other inmates seeking funds for the bar. The result was great suffering when the weather turned cold. One estimate stated that 20 gallons of spirits were brought into the prison daily by the jailer for sale to the inmates. It was also considered a common practice for certain women to arrange to get arrested to gain access to the male prisoners.

After the peace of 1783, a group of prominent citizens led by Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush and others organized a movement to reform the harsh penal code of 1718. The new law substituted public labor for the previous severe punishments. But reaction against the public display of convicts on the streets of the city and the disgraceful conditions in the Walnut Street jail led to the formation in 1787 of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, (a name it retained for 100 years, at which time it became The Pennsylvania Prison Society), the first of such societies in the world. Members of the Society were appalled by what they learned about the new Walnut Street prison and the next year presented to the state legislature an account of their investigations of conditions and recommended solitary confinement at hard labor as a remedy and reformative strategy. An act of 1790 brought about sweeping reforms in the prison and authorized a penitentiary house with 16 cells to be built in the yard of the jail to carry out solitary confinement with labor for "hardened atrocious offenders." Walnut Street Jail, by the same legislation, became the first state prison in Pennsylvania. Following 1790, the Walnut Street jail became a showplace, with separation of different sorts of prisoners and workshops providing useful trade instruction. The old abuses and idleness seemed eliminated, but with Walnut Street now a state prison and the population of Philadelphia increasing rapidly, it, like its predecessor, became intolerably crowded. The large rooms, 18 feet square, which still housed most of the prisoners, by 1795 had between 30 and 40 occupants each. The Prison Society continued to urge the creation of large penitentiaries for the more efficient handling of prisoners. Partially as the result of the Prison Societys efforts, money was appropriated for a state penitentiary to be built at Allegheny, now part of Pittsburgh. The reformers also remained convinced that in spite of the small-scale isolation cellblock at Walnut Street, that site would never prove the value of the system of separate confinement which came to be called the Pennsylvania System. Only an entire larger structure, built specifically to separate inmates from one another, would be needed. Authorizing legislation was finally passed on March 20, 1821, and eleven commissioners were appointed by the governor. Among them was Samuel Wood, later to be the first warden of the prison. All but three of the building commissioners were either members of the Pennsylvania Prison Society or had served on the board of inspectors of the Walnut Street jail. Members of the Prison Society felt that the solution to the disorder and corruption in most prisons and even at the Walnut Street Jail lay in complete separation of each inmate for his or her entire sentence, a system which had been tried occasionally in England but was always abandoned because of costs and inadequate prison structures. The small "penitentiary house" of 16 cells at Walnut Street jail had ended up being used mostly for hard core prisoners

and as punishment of infractions of prison rules. What was needed was a wholly new kind of prison on a large scale. In 1822, work began on what was to become Eastern State Penitentiary, although at the time it was called Cherry Hill because it displaced a cherry orchard. Despite not being finished, the prison opened in 1829. Completed in 1836, it turned out to be one of the largest structures in the country at the time and far exceeding preliminary cost estimates. Each prisoner was to be provided with a cell from which they would rarely leave and each cell had to be large enough to be a workplace and have attached a small individual exercise yard. Cutting edge technology of the 1820s and 1830s was used to install conveniences unmatched in other public buildings: central heating (before the U.S. Capitol); a flush toilet in each cell (long before the White House was provided with such conveniences); shower baths (apparently the first in the country). The system of 24-hour separation of each prisoner coupled with in-cell feeding, work, and sometimes vocational instruction, came to be known as the Pennsylvania System or Separate System, and remained the official position of the Pennsylvania Prison Society throughout the 19th century, although the system and its unusual architecture a central hub and radiating cellblocks were seldom imitated in other states. An alternative system known as the Auburn or Silent system developed elsewhere in the United States, with individual sleeping cells, sometimes as small as 2 by 6 feet, and work in congregate shops in silence during the day. By the early decades of the 20th Century, neither system was used in the United States. However, the Separate System and its distinctive hub-and-spoke or radial architecture, which had developed in the Philadelphia prison, became the template for reform all over Europe, South America, and Asia. The role of the Prison Society could be subsumed under three rubrics: oversight and advocacy, prison visiting, and assistance to men and women released from prison. From the time of the organizations inception, Prison Society members made regular visits to prisons to speak with prisoners about their lives as well as conditions in the prison. Some scholars believe that those early visitors were easily hoodwinked by both officials and inmates but certainly their periodic visits did discourage some of the abuses which might otherwise have occurred over the years. Such matters as food, clothing, heating of the cells and sanitation could be noticed by the visitors. At Eastern State Penitentiary in one month alone, in 1861, nearly 800 visits in the cells and 300 at the cell door were carried out by Prison Society members. The Prison Societys Official Visitors are provided access to all state and county correctional facilities through act of legislature. This legislative mandate, unmatched anywhere in the nation, ensures citizen involvement in the administration of justice which provides a base of information for the oversight of

the prison system and for inmate advocacy. Today, the Prison Societys network of more than 450 Official Visitors makes roughly 5,000 prison visits each year and continues to be one of the most vital and important aspects of the organization. Advocacy issues the Prison Society has tackled in recent years include: influencing the Board of Pardons to hear more cases, especially those of life sentenced prisoners; encouraging legislative changes in the areas of early parole for "good time" behavior, repealing mandatory sentencing codes, establishing specialty courts (drug and mental health), and promoting legislation that does not prohibit ex-offenders from employment, housing, and public welfare benefits; advocating for the abolition of the death penalty; meeting regularly with top corrections officials to promote reform. As part of its mission to inform the public on issues dealing with the treatment of prisoners and corrections in general, the Prison Society established in 1845 the Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy, which is published today as The Prison Journal. Additionally, the Prison Society published a quarterly newsletter, Correctional Forum, as well as a monthly newsletter, Graterfriends, published primarily for prisoners. Additionally, the Prison Society provides testimony on criminal justice issues, community speakers, and panelists for seminars and conferences. The Prison Society is involved in a wide range of program areas which provide services for prisoners, ex-offenders, and their families. For example, Re-Entry Services Programs empower ex-offenders to become respected and productive members of the community by helping them with life skills, obtaining necessary identification, job search preparation, and job readiness. Restorative Justice services help offenders find meaningful ways to be accountable for their crimes and build relationships with communities and victims. Because "life means life" in Pennsylvania, the graying prison population is rising dramatically and the Prison Society provides case management to incarcerated men and women age 50 and older. The Prison Society helps families affected by incarceration build and maintain their relationships through programs such as virtual video conferencing, parenting education, and support groups for children of incarcerated parents. For more than two centuries, the Prison Society has worked diligently to combine justice and compassion for a more humane and restorative correctional system. Today, the Prison Society continues that mission with patience and passion and with steadfast energy through a dedicated and competent statewide staff, a committed board of directors with exceptional expertise in the criminal justice and corrections world, and more than 1,000 members who support the organization.