“The Summit addresses a man-made problem brought about by the previous administration’s reckless implementation of a scorched-earth policy on illegal drugs”
If the government wants to win the war on illegal drugs and decongest our overcrowded jail facilities, law enforcement agencies should focus on quality over quantity.
This was the opinion expressed by Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Karl Miranda in a recent news forum that tackled the rationale and goals of the recently concluded National Jail Decongestion Summit held from Dec. 6 to 7.
This Summit was organized by the Justice Sector Coordinating Council composed of the Supreme Court, Department of Justice and Department of the Interior and Local Government.
It was attended by no less than President Marcos Jr., Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, indicating in no uncertain terms the importance of this gathering.
The quality the jurist was referring to meant high-value targets, or big-time drug traffickers, that the police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency should concentrate on.
The quantity, he said, referred to street-level drug peddlers and users, who make up most of those arrested—and killed—in so-called buy-bust operations by the police.
According to Miranda, one of the convenors of the Summit, of the nearly 123,000 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), in detention facilities of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, only 107 or 0.08 percent are on trial as manufacturers or producers of dangerous drugs.
The jurist said about 57,687 or 47 percent are detained on charges of selling, trading, distribution or transportation of illegal substances.
He pointed out most of them were caught with “minute” amounts of illegal drugs.
He pointed out the 49,200 other PDLs, or about 40 percent of the jail population who are on trial for possession and use of illegal drugs were caught with only small amounts of the prohibited drugs.
The BJMP said of the inmates in their custody, 70 percent are facing trial on drug charges. BJMP jails have a congestion rate of around 358 percent since these can only accommodate 56,000 inmates.
For Miranda, law enforcement agencies should focus not on the number of people they would arrest but on the quality of their operations, meaning those apprehended would have a high probability of getting convicted by courts.
“It goes back not to the quantity of arrests but to the quality of arrests,” he said. He clarified, however, that this statement should not be misconstrued as urging law enforcers not to arrest street-level pushers and users.
PDEA and the Philippine National Police are the government’s main implementers of the anti-drug campaign that led to more than 6,000 deaths of those who were killed since they fought back (“nanlaban”) when accosted by law enforcers in their homes or out in the streets.
The bloody war on drugs by the previous Duterte administration., human rights groups here and abroad claim, led not just to the officially acknowledged death toll of 6,000 or so alleged drug suspects but even to as many as from 20,000 to 30,000 between 2016 and 2022.
As the death toll from Duterte’s drug war rose dramatically, enough to merit serious concern from the International Criminal Court as to constitute crimes against humanity after just a year of his term, it became clear the campaign had spun out of control, with even those arrested with a gram of methamphetamine hydrochloride or popularly known as shabu clamped in jail to await prosecution in our courts, often for years on end.
With the slow pace of the justice system in the country, no wonder our jails are bursting at the seams with an influx of drug suspects.
The overcrowding in our detention facilities has been exacerbated by what appeared to be a quota system imposed by the police leadership on police offices at the regional, provincial, city and town levels during the previous administration as a requirement for the promotion of police officials to higher positions.
Hence, with more drug suspects neutralized, either killed because nanlaban or arrested and detained bloated the jail population in no time at all.
The National Jail Decongestion Summit addresses a man-made problem brought about by the previous administration’s reckless implementation of a scorched-earth policy on illegal drugs that rounded up thousands of small-time users and street peddlers but allowed the big shots to thumb their noses at law enforcers and get away with their loot.
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