The experience of the Ilocos Sur provincial jail in rehabilitating prison inmates is not only worth telling and retelling, but must be replicated nationwide as it has emerged as a great model for others to follow, with its slogan: “From Violators to Cultivators”.
I was with 50 agricultural journalists and information writers when we visited the jail’s Organic Vegetable Garden, which formed the educational tour portion of a seminar-workshop on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security issues mainly for the region’s writers, held last week in Bantay, Ilocos Sur, by the Philippine Agricultural Journalists Inc., where I am a director and five-time president over two decades back.
From nauseam to museum. A few years back, the provincial jail was just housed at the back of the provincial capitol at the center of Vigan City, and thus became an eyesore and nuisance to Vigan as a tourist heritage site. And one could not control the noise made by the inmates, who are relatively free, ironically, to express their angst, regrets and frustrations in life, while inside the prison’s barbed-wire walls. And their voices were within hearing distance of court hearings and provincial board meetings at the capitol.
The increasing number of inmates posed a problem as a bulging population was no longer healthy. Thus, the transfer to a 4,000-square-meter lot in Barangay Taleb in the adjoining town of Bantay was a welcome development. In place of the old jail rose the museum, which is now a Vigan tourist attraction, where Ilocos Sur showcases its rich history and heritage, cultural artifacts, etc.
Low cost for Ilocos. Constructing new prison buildings cost a lot for Ilocos Sur, but the provincial government, now under Gov. Ryan Singson, realized that it could save on operations if the inmates could grow their own food.
Thus, an organic farm was developed with the help of Agricultural Training Institute under Dr. Roger Evangelista, not really to achieve lower costs of operations, but to keep inmates preoccupied, generate earnings for themselves, and learn the skills they can take with them once they gain liberty.
Resident agriculturist Tito Batin trained the inmates to greenhouse nursery and to various vegetable crop culture from tomatoes, pepper, pechay, plants as natural pest repellants and many more, including sitao (stringbeans) and patola (gourd), which elicited laughter owing to their sex-sounding undertones if translated to Ilocano. I also asked a “sili” question about hot pepper, and got “sili” remarks from fellow writers.
Mushrooms, other rooms for improvement. Initially, 80 truckloads of garden soil and 30 truckloads of carbonized-rice hulls were brought in to fast-track the establishment of the organic farm, Batin said. Today, they now process their own carbonized-rice hulls, which they sell outside jail. Carbonized hulls, if mixed with wastes (bio-kitchen waste, animal wastes) for their nitrogen content, can serve as good organic fertilizers.
The University of Northern Philippines also taught them how to prepare and grow mushrooms, which they produce in volume phase by phase, and potentially process mushroom burgers and other food products. Technical Education and Skills Development Authority also helped provide equipment for the livelihood project.
Raymond Tabios, provincial warden, said that with 378 inmates, including 27 women, not all of them can become farming cultivators. Of course, other livelihood skills can be cultivated, which they did, like handicrafts from paper craft, plastic cutflowers, artistic bonsai trees made out of wires and beads, plastic bottle décors, miniature figurines, like kalesas, and many more the imagination can bring them.
Nurture their future. “Our objectives are to eliminate their earlier criminal behavior, instill discipline and teach them to become productive citizens again,” Tabios said.
People of Ilocos Sur, led by their governor, take pride in their jail not only because it has become a regular farm tourism site, but has been accredited since October 2016 as one of the learning sites in the region. And because inmates were determined to learn and help themselves, with some even able to send 11 kids and siblings to school from their jail farm earnings and their handicraft selling to tourist-visitors.
As they have become trainers themselves, Singson was quoted to have said these inmates, once released, “won’t be called ex-convicts, but teachers instead”. Actually, most are detainees awaiting trials and final conviction, but because they are more determined and hopeful, they are “men of conviction” in its other meaning.
Tabios also welcomes our proposals to form cooperative clusters among inmates and let them undergo, perhaps, incubation tie-ups with big brother cooperatives and non-governmental organizations. Local government can match their meager savings/earnings, which can further be leveraged by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s Credit Surety Fund, which has a facility for marginalized cooperatives that could match 10 times their equity at concessional rates, noncollaterized and payable in 10 years.
Drug users as addicts, similar to addicts of cigarettes, liquor or gambling, are not heinous criminals, compared to many criminals at the Ilocos Sur jail, who are successfully being rehabilitated. Thus, drug users need not be gunned down but rehabilitated. Perhaps, rich cities, like Quezon City, can explore relocating their crowded jails through sister-city tie-ups with agricultural small towns in the provinces, not only to decongest the cities, but to nurture the future of their inmates, many of whom are innocent but poor, and could not afford bail or lawyers.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com
1 comment
Great piece, Mike. An inspiring and thought-provoking one. How I wish to see those inmates at the Ilocos Sur provincial jail turn from “violators to cultivators then to entrepreneurs”.