The Tagbilaran City jail is overcrowded by more than 400-percent as the population of inmates in the detention facility has reached a total of 417 or more than four times over the ideal jail capacity of 78 inmates.
Jail Senior Inspector Mark Anthony Omega during an interview with Station dyRD recently, bared that the City of Tagbilaran Rehabilitation Center (CTRC), or more commonly known as city jail, only has 13 detention cells.
Ideally, each cell is supposed to house 4 to 6 prisoners. But the number of arrests in relation to drug cases during the past several months have caused a huge increase in the number of inmates, according to Omega.
The city jail warden bared that drug suspects comprise 80% of all the total number of inmates.
Presently, there are 31 female prisoners who are also mostly involved in drug-related cases.
Overpopulation of detention facilities is, however, a nationwide issue with the Commission on Audit (COA) recently releasing a report which revealed that the country’s jails are 511-percent overpopulated
“As of December 31, 2016 the BJMP (Bureau of Jail Management and Penology) has a total jail population of 126,946 which exceeded the total ideal capacity of 20,746 having a variance of 106,200 or has a total average of 511 percent of congestion/overcrowding or clogging,” the COA said in its annual audit report posted on its website.
The total number of inmates increased by 30,544 from 2015, the report noted.