The Philippines has one of the oldest criminological education in the world. The Philippine College of Criminology (PCCr) was established in 1954, long before other countries recognized the crime problem and the need to understand the root causes of crime. Currently, we have hundreds of colleges and universities offering Bachelors Degrees in Criminology and thousands of students graduate every year with a BA degree. Additionally, graduates need to take a professional exam, a Board Examination for Criminologists, to become a Registered Criminologist. Most of the criminology graduates become police officers, jail officers, prison officers and parole and probation officers.
Given this long history of criminological education, the Philippines should expect to have professional policing and corrections. Most studies indicate that training and education improves behavior. We should have expected that our police officers are aware of the correct criminal procedures, that they value the rights of the accused, and they know how to wield their power to use of deadly force effectively. After 4 years of Criminology education, we should expect that our police officers are exposed to evidence based programs such as "problem oriented" policing in order to effectively prevent crimes in the communities. Likewise, our jail and prison officers should have known how to assess the risk of the offenders, how to house and segregate the persons deprived of liberty, and how to effectively treat their criminogenic behaviors. We should expect that, after undergoing 4 years of criminological education. they should know about the corrupting influences of prisonization and they should be aware of how to avoid such.
Yet despite the abundance and prominence of criminology education in the Philippines, problems in our police and correctional agencies abound. Police officers continually use investigation techniques that do not respect the rights of the accused. There are still many incidents of "encounter killings" (nanlaban) that lead to the death of our citizens. This indicates that our police officers do not know how to effectively wield their awesome power to use deadly force. Jail and prison officers continually use the principles of old penology, such as the use of the mayores, pangkat, talipapa and VIP systems. Our correctional officers have rudimentary knowledge about risk assessments, and they have not developed any proven programs that address criminogenic needs such as substance abuse and criminal thinking patterns.
One of the reasons for this is the outdated curriculum offered by the criminological schools in the Philippines. Criminology schools in the Philippines emphasize more on the trade and skills. They offer courses such as Ballistics, Criminalistics, Questioned Documents. They also teach, as requirements Judo, Karate and Shooting. Some teach courses like VIP security. Most of these courses are offered in police training academies, giving the impression that criminologists are trained to become police officers.
Criminological education, to be effective, must be broader in emphasis. It must look at the root causes of criminal behavior and how to respond to criminal behavior. It must incorporate courses on the psychology and sociology of criminal conduct. It must incorporate locally developed criminological theories and utilize scientific research evidence to produce local knowledge.
Criminology schools should endeavor to study effective police and correctional practices, evaluate and document those practices, and based on the knowledge generated, train their students on how to apply these best practices in the real world.
Criminology schools, for example, can modify their intership programs where they send their students to the jails and prisons. In this intership program, the criminology students are simply assigned to search the visitors and PDLs for contraband. They simply become an appendage of the jail and prison custodial work, a mechanical, boring work without opportunity for knowledge generation. Instead, the internship program should allow for students to introduce a new program that addresses a criminogenic need, implement the program based on the parameters of an applicable theory and research design, evaluate the effectiveness of the program, and report the knowledge generated from this program. This way, the criminological internship education becomes meaningful and productive.
The criminology education in the Philippines need to be upgraded. Thousand of students graduate every year and they simply replicate old, outdated, iniquitous, corrupt and abusive practices in our criminal justice system. The professional criminology organizations in the Philippines are spearheading these reforms and their efforts must be supported.
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