Jeanette Kaye Badulis

1-Delta

REFLECTION PAPER
Filipino Prisons at Breaking Point:

The cells are bursting at the seams with detainees from President Rodrigo Duterte's year-long drug war. Thousands
of people have been killed as a result of Duterte's campaign, the majority of whom were drug users and small-time
peddlers. Tens of thousands more have been imprisoned, and the Southeast Asian country's prisons and courts are
buckling under the strain. The prison was built for 262 inmates but now houses 2,975, with three-quarters of them
imprisoned for drug-related offenses. Its basketball court, chapel, classrooms, and walkways are used as sleeping
areas for detainees at night. Inmates who spoke to Reuters described their living conditions as unbearable, made
worse by the prospect that their trials could last years.

Many of them are ineligible for bail or are unable to pay the bond. Inmates at this desperately overcrowded
remand prison in the Philippine capital of Manila pray for the smallest of things. That it will not rain, that they will
be able to buy some food to supplement their meager rations, and that the case against them will be heard in
court soon. Any rain in Quezon City Jail means precious open-air sleeping spaces will be lost. Spaces are bought
and sold there, but the simple reality is that there simply isn't enough room due to the state-sanctioned war on
drugs. The prisoners do have the ability to move freely within the confines of the prison, but the truth is that there
simply isn't any.