Capiz

A province on Panay Island in the Visayas region of the Philippines. Harry’s coverage of it so far is a single subject, arranged over six months: full access to the provincial prison outside Roxas City. Nothing else of the province appears on camera, so this page is effectively about the prison until a later video adds to it.

Capiz Rehabilitation Center

A provincial prison holding over 350 people, more than 50 of them serving murder sentences and more than 100 on drug-related charges. The warden’s first point about the population is one Harry keeps in view: a large share of the men inside have not been convicted of anything — they are still on trial.

Conditions

The overcrowding is the central fact. Three male cells hold 110, 104 and 102 people against a design capacity of 50 each; a fourth block houses 16 women. Sleeping platforms are stacked two and three tiers high, made of bare wood with no mattresses — a thin pillow and a blanket each. There is no air conditioning and very little electricity, the showers are inside the same space a metre from the bunks, and Harry, moving around barely at all, is soaked through within a minute of walking in. Overcrowding has also taken the chapel out of use as a chapel: it now houses the elderly and the sick.

There is no power in the kitchen either, so inmates cook over coal they buy themselves, and there is a shop and a stall economy inside the walls.

How it runs

• No gangs. They are not permitted. Each cell elects a selda mayor instead, chosen by the other inmates for character rather than force. He runs the head counts and organises activities, and earns Good Conduct Time Allowance — sentence reduction — for doing it.
• Head counts every three hours, around the clock, which Harry expected to be twice a day.
• Yard access most of the day. His guide agrees the inmates have a fair amount of freedom by comparison with other prisons.
• Family visits daily, 9am to 3pm — every day, if the family can come.
• Conjugal visits daily, in a shared upstairs room. Harry doesn’t film it and says outright that he thinks every prison system should allow it.
• Five guards on duty for 350 inmates the day he filmed, against a total staff of about 50. One escape in the prison’s history, when a guard left a door open; the man was back inside 21 days later.
• Contraband is overwhelmingly shabu — methamphetamine — according to the warden.
• Security cameras: one working, the rest broken.

What Harry took from it

He went in expecting the worst — dangerous men, a hostile regime — and came out calling it the friendliest prison in the world, while being clear that the living conditions are as hard as anything he has filmed. Those two findings sit side by side rather than cancelling out. Talking to two men serving murder sentences, neither of whom expressed regret, did not change the conclusion he states at the end: rehabilitation depends on treating people as people whatever they did, educating them, and giving them something to work towards. Asked what was hardest about being inside, one man’s answer was December, and missing his family.

Harry’s tips

• Bring something if you are given this kind of access. Hearing the prison was low on supplies, he came back with toothbrushes, body wash, noodles, rice seasoning and a replacement karaoke machine — see bring gifts for hosts.
• Don’t take the reputation on trust, here least of all — see judge a place for yourself.

Source

• Inside a Brutal Filipino Prison 🇵🇭 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuKz5JwYK4U