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The public is frustrated with the criminal justice system, and among the
reasons is the porousness of the nations detention facilities. This became
evident again last Sunday, when 13 inmates facing drug charges escaped
before dawn from the detention facility of the Philippine Drug Enforcement
Agency at Camp Olivas in Pampanga, home of the Philippine National Police
regional office in Central Luzon.
Initial investigation showed that the inmates sawed off the grills of their cell
and escaped through a private subdivision at the back of the police camp.
How do inmates get hold of a saw? Such mysteries are not unusual in the
nations detention facilities. High-value terrorists, kidnappers and drug
traffickers have waltzed out of supposedly maximum security detention even
at the PNP headquarters at Camp Crame.
When inmates arent sawing off jail grills, their cohorts are springing them from
detention. Communist rebels, Islamic separatists, the Abu Sayyaf, the
Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and, more recently, the Islamic State-
inspired Maute group have raided government detention facilities and sprung
their cohorts. Last month, about a hundred gunmen said to be linked to the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front swooped down on the North Cotabato District
Jail in Kidapawan, killed a guard and freed over 150 inmates in what has been
described as the countrys biggest jailbreak.
http://m.philstar.com/opinion/show/d18c6e9dfecaed3d294fff99cb29d21d?
t=ae2brk24c07mvv9dci2che4qq7
Shame campaign
This has been tried before, and discarded. Alfredo Lim, dubbed the Dirty
Harry of the Philippines, spray-painted the houses of drug suspects in Manila
in a shame campaign that was declared unconstitutional in 2000 by the Court
of Appeals.
Spray-painting homes is better than executing drug suspects, but that doesnt
make such a campaign compliant with the Constitution. This time, with the
bloody campaign against illegal drugs slowed down by abuses committed by
the police unit principally tasked to wage the war, the administration is
considering its version of the shame campaign: posting stickers on houses
that are deemed drug-free.