The way it’s been done

September 7, 2019 Sideglance

The revelations made in the Senate inquiry on the GCTA law regarding bribes and payments made for the early release of convicts is nothing new in a penal system that is already rife with corruption.

There is no surprise in the fact that the early release in prison mechanism for good behavior of convicts is being peddled like an ordinary market commodity within penitentiaries by unscrupulous individuals or perhaps even groups of those tasked to ensure the integrity of the prison system.

What should be surprising is the fact that this shenanigan is only now being investigated and how come it is the only thing subject of the inquiry.

The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee should undertake to investigate all types of corruption such as bribery and extortion regularly occurring within the confines of the jails and other penal facilities in the country. Nothing short of a total overhaul is needed if the government intends to clean the Aegean stables that the penal institutions have become.

It bears reminding that convicts or those already being made to suffer imprisonment as a penalty will have nothing else except to try moving heaven and earth to be comfortable within the confines of a guarded cell. From food, vices, more time outside the cell and into the exercise yard, more conjugal visits, and a lot of other favors and benefits that can be granted by those guarding these so called Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL), these are all susceptible to corruption and exchange of financial consideration.

Why should the implementation of the GCTA law be any different? The present penal facilities, since the earlier decades when they were established, simply factories for corruption, either through the instigation of prisoners who wanted better accommodation and wider influence for them to continue conducting their nefarious trades (e.g. illegal drugs, murder for hire,) or the jail guards and officers themselves who offer services in exchange for money.

The penal system has been mired in corruption for the longest time, not for a majority of those having no direct engagement with incarcerated convicts, but more on those who have direct access to the prisoners and who are willing to curry favors from the former for some type of consideration.

In other countries where it is their government who manage and supervise the penal facilities, corruption is rife. In fact in some instances it is the prisoners who run the jails where they are imprisoned with the guards simply looking out to protect their own interests while making money on the side.

This is the ugly truth in any prison where a lot of convicts who are already adjudged as less than model citizens of society would seek to participate, sometimes voluntarily or thru coercion and intimidation, or even upon orders in other forms of crime while incarcerated.

Meanwhile those that are supposed to guard and monitor them are dragged into being willing or unwilling accomplices in these criminal activities.

It is time to revamp and rehabilitate the entire penal system in the country.