BUREAU of Corrections officer-in-charge Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr. yesterday vowed to rid the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City of illegal activities using a technology-driven security system to compensate for the lack of personnel.
Catapang said the system includes the use of facial recognition technology, more close circuit television cameras, and signal jammers.
“This will be a technology-driven security system. The problem on who will guard the guardians, the technology will guard the guardians,” Catapang said in a press briefing, likening the system to the military’s command center where the commander can monitor his men and the areas where they are deployed.
“Similar to the AFP command center. I can see everyone who is on duty, I can see them on the screen, who is on duty in quarter one, quarter two, quarter three, quarter four,” explained Catapang, who served as the 45th AFP chief from July 2014 to July 2015.
He said the facial recognition technology will enable easy identification and accounting of inmates, especially considering the number of prisoners in the national penitentiary.
The NBP has over 28,000 inmates, including more than 17,000 in its maximum-security compound. The national penitentiary was originally meant to house at most 6,000 inmates when it was constructed in 1940.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla had earlier said the NBP and six other BuCor prison facilities have a 330 percent congestion rate.
Catapang also bared the deployment of K-9 units in the NBP. The K-9 unit includes 15 large dogs trained to find explosives and 15 small dogs that can sniff out illegal drugs and even cellular phones.
He said the first batch of sniffer dogs have been deployed in the NBP’s Gate Four where clothes, food and other items are inspected.
“They will go through the K-9 units and then through the security technology,” he said.
Earlier this month, BuCor personnel confiscated a huge stash of smuggled items inside the NBP, including over 7,500 cans of beer, cellular phones and laptops.
In the same press briefing, Catapang also bared they have identified jail personnel involved in the smuggling of contraband items into the NBP but declined to provide details due to the ongoing investigation.
“We already have their names and they are under investigation,” said Catapang, who had earlier said the entry of contraband items could not have happened without the collusion of jail personnel.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Raquel Fortun yesterday likened the pileup of unclaimed cadavers of NBP inmates at a funeral parlor in Muntinlupa City to a scene straight out of “mass disaster.”
Fortun was referring to the cadavers at the Eastern Funeral Homes, some of which have been in storage since December 2021.
“The biggest challenge here is the number. How do you manage the dead, and you can liken this to a mass disaster, except that they are contained in one place,” Fortun told ABS-CBN News Channel.
She said that during her initial inspection last Saturday, accompanied by officials of the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation, she saw 120 cadavers that were already in a “mummified state.”
Fortun said around 50 cadavers, including recent deaths, are more suitable for autopsy.
“A full autopsy, I believe, would still be possible, especially in the recent deaths. Some of them can still be examined,” she said.
Fortun said the good news is that each cadaver comes with a death certificate that she can study and review.
She said it is still too early to say whether foul play was involved in some inmates’ death as it would require “totality of evidence” to come to such a conclusion.
