BUREAU of Corrections Director General Gregorio Catapang yesterday said the 15-hectare Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong City will be closed before the end of the Marcos administration in 2028 and inmates will be farmed out to several penal colonies outside of Metro Manila.
Catapang said the move is part of the overall BuCor plan to decongest its prison facilities by building regional prisons and the transfer of heinous crime convicts to high-tech prison facilities inside three military reservation camps in Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
“The CIW will be transferred outside of Metro Manila. This 15-hectare facility will be closed before the end of the Marcos administration,” Catapang said during the ceremony for the release of 267 inmates from the CIW, New Bilibid Prison and other penal colonies yesterday.
He said they are looking at several facilities outside of Metro Manila to house the CIW inmates.
“We have facilities in Palawan, Davao, Mindoro, Leyte and even Fort Magsaysay for them,” he said.
The BuCor operates the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan, Davao Prison and Penal Farm, Leyte Regional Prison in Abuyog, Leyte, while it is looking at building a new facility in Fort Magsaysay in Palayan City, Nueva Ecija.
He said these regional facilities are not congested, and as penal colonies, the inmates can even bring with them their families.
As of January 2023, the CIW has an inmate population of 3,297 though its capacity is only for 1,008, a 230 percent congestion rate.
All of the prison facilities of the BuCor have congestion problems.
Remulla earlier said the BuCor facilities, including the NBP, had an inmate population of over 50,000 as of January this year, although their total capacity is only around 12,000, or an average congestion rate of 310 percent.
