In an effort to curtail the spread of Covid-19 among inmates in the country’s prisons, Philippine has released about 10,000 prisoners across its prison facilities.
While disclosing this on Saturday May 2, 2020, Mario Victor Leonen, Associate Supreme Court Justice, stated that releasing the inmates was in compliance to the directive given to lower courts by the supreme court to free prisoners who are awaiting trial and those who could not afford bail.
“The court is very much aware of the congested situation in our prisons. Also those who have been ordered to be released are prisoners with six-month jail terms and elderly and ailing prisoners,” Leonen said.
As Philippine prison facilities get overcrowded, medical experts in the country have warned that the condition of the facilities could be a ticking time-bomb.
For instance, a government data has shown that there are 136,000 inmates in more than 450 jails.
As of Friday, two prisons in the central island of Cebu have reported about 348 infections among inmates whose total number is above 8,000.
As of Saturday, there have been about 8,928 recorded coronavirus cases and 603 deaths in the Philippine.
