What has been done:
Ten months into our Community Bail Bond Program our Program Field Officers have committed themselves to conducting weekly monitoring/home visits of referrals & successfully released participants, attending court hearings, coordinating with barangay officials & PAO lawyers, and the processing of bail.
Our partnership with El Proveedores Foundation continues to provide our CBB Participants with post release assistance and interventions. To date they have provided Php 60,000.00 worth of capital loan assistance to ten of our CBB Participants.
We continued with the conduct of webinar trainings for the Bureau of Corrections, Parole & Probation Administration and Quezon City Jail Male Dorm.
We were also fortunate to have been a participant in the ongoing enhancement of the learning design and program of instruction for the Jail Basic Recruit Course of the Philippine Public Safety College (PPSC) and the National Jail Management and Penology Training Institute (NJMPTI). We advocated for the inclusion of the Principles of Effective Jail Management and the Principles of Classification, Risk Assessment and Case Management in the overall learning design.
We likewise continued our engagement with other NGO’s who also advocate for improvements in our criminal justice system. In particular, we facilitated the donation of medicines and miscellaneous supplies to several jail facilities.
The replication of the Community Bail Bond Program through the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro continues as we got into the detailed aspects of program implementation.
As of March 26, there have been 162 individuals referred to our program coming from 6 jail facilities, 2 police stations and 3 youth centers of whom, 87 had been interviewed. Of the interviewed, 22 had been successfully bailed out, 9 had their cases dismissed, 2 were successfully referred to probation, 3 were released on recognizance, 6 had served their sentences, 3 had been acquitted, and 1 CICL was accepted into the diversion program. The rest are still in jail hoping to be granted early release. Of the 46 released, 43 had been reintegrated to their respective families and communities.
Through our CBB program, the government has now saved Php 459,410.00. This is computed by adding the amount budgeted per day (PhP70 for food) multiplied by the number of days since the day of the release from jail of every individual Participant. These savings will increase as days go by and as long as their cases are not terminated. For those whose cases are dismissed, served early or whose probation was approved, we expect a savings of least 60 days of non-incarceration.
Additionally, on top of the food savings by the government, these individuals are now back to the community and actively engaged in their livelihood- hence contributing to the economy.
More importantly, we reduced jail crowding which is one of the major issues that is faced by our correctional facilities, especially in the time of the COVID19 pandemic.
Finally, we minimized their exposure to the criminogenic jail environment leading to better reentry to the society as responsible members.
However, we were also faced with a number of challenges that usually involved dealing with police officers and court personnel and delays in securing bail documents. But we are all taking these in stride. We continue to learn and re-learn approaches and procedures. And this is a welcome experience for us. We know that this is just the beginning. We envision that more PDLs and CICLs would be assisted soon with their liberties restored, their dignity regained and that their lives are eventually rebuilt. We as a community have a significant role in all these. In the long run, support for our prisons and prisoners as a whole would benefit all of society in terms of lower rates of recidivism and increased sense of public safety. GOD IS ON OUR SIDE!
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