In 2023, BuCor Chief Gregorio Catapang Jr. has expressed plans to close down the prison by 2028 and convert it into a commercial hub, by which time an estimated 7,500 minimum and medium security inmates will have transferred to regional prisons where their hometown is located and high-risk offenders will have transferred to a supermax prison in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro.[3][4]
History
The Old Bilibid Prison, then known as Carcel y Presidio Correccional[2] (Spanish, "Correctional Jail and Military Prison") occupied a rectangular piece of land that was part of the Mayhaligue Estate in the heart of Manila. The old prison was established by the Spanish colonial government on June 25, 1865, via royal decree.[5] It was divided into two sections: the Carcel, which could accommodate 600 inmates; and the Presidio, which could hold 527 prisoners.
Aerial view of New Bilibid Prison, Muntinlupa, 1940
Due to increasing crime, the Commonwealth government enacted Commonwealth Act No. 67[2] and a new prison was built in Muntinlupa on a 5,310,872m2 (57,165,750sqft)[5] land in an area considered at that time to be "remote". Muntinlupa, then a municipality in the province of Rizal, is several miles southeast of downtown Manila, near the shores of Laguna de Bay. Construction began on New Bilibid in 1936 with a budget of one million Philippine pesos.[2] In 1940, the prisoners, equipment and facilities were transferred from Old Bilibid to the new prison. The remnants of the old facility was used by the City of Manila as its detention center. In 1941, the new facility was officially named "New Bilibid Prison".
World War II
Prisoners of war at the New Bilibid and Luzon POW Camp Number 1
Upon the outbreak of World War II in the Philippines on December 8, 1941 (Manila Time), the Philippine government rounded up all Japanese "enemy aliens" and placed them in various camps. The 4,000 Japanese nationals living in Manila—mostly businessmen and professionals—were interned at the Old Bilibid prison and at the newly-constructed New Bilibid Prison.[6] The prison leadership under Prisons Director Major Eriberto Misa was said to had given compassionate treatment to the internees, resulting in the latter's trust in Misa.[7] On the other hand, the regular prisoners tried to contribute to the war effort by donating blood for the soldiers and pledging to fight the Japanese if it would be allowed by the government. However, the security risk this might pose[7] prompted the government to decline such offer.
As the Japanese advanced towards Manila, the regular prisoners became troubled by the stories of brutalities done by the Imperial Japanese Army troops in their occupied areas. Thus, on December 27, 1941, the prisoners attempted a mass escape. The escapees burned two buildings in this attempt, and about 3,000 prisoners tried to climb the prison walls. The prison guards had to fire their guns into the air to deter the prisoners from attempting to escape. The following morning, the escape had been averted. The authorities accounted for all prisoners.[7] Director Misa had to clarify to news outlets that escape attempts such as those never succeeded.[8]
With the impending arrival of the Japanese in Muntinlupa, Misa had sent then-NBP Superintendent (later Director of Prisons) Alfredo Bunye and his son Guillermo Misa to meet the Japanese forces in advance and “talk them out of entering the New Bilibid Prisons.” He then waited at the prison gates for whatever fate the invaders would give them. When the Japanese arrived, they let Misa stay in his position and ordered him to free the Japanese interns inside the prison. They likewise asserted that Misa would be responsible for any jailbreak attempt that the prisoners would do[7]
The Japanese converted the New Bilibid Prison into a prisoner-of-war camp for American and Filipino soldiers. Also imprisoned in the same facility were military offenders and captured guerrillas. Director Misa and the prison employees used their positions to secretly help the POWs by giving medical aid to the victims of torture and allowing their families to visit them and be given food and written letters. Later, some prison employees joined the guerrilla movement while continuing their work there. At the same time, Director Misa also asserted to the Japanese the provision of necessary supplies for the prisoners, the employees, and the civilian residents living within the prison reservation.[7][9]
Director Misa's implicit support for the underground resistance movement encouraged the guerrillas to conduct operations within the prison premises. Initially, the guerrillas conducted intelligence activities inside the prison with the help of their comrades employed by Misa as prison guards.[10] Then, on the wee hours of June 24–25, 1944, the Hunters ROTC guerrillas, personally led by Colonel Terry Adevoso, assaulted the prison and, without firing a gunshot, liberated 30 imprisoned guerrillas and hauled a large stash of weapons and ammunition.[11] The Japanese wanted to execute Misa for this incident, but President Jose P. Laurel intervened by asserting that the Philippine government was already independent of Japan. He then dismissed Misa[12] and replaced him with Colonel Elias Dequino,[13] who was perceived as a pro-Japanese officer. The prison guards were also replaced by troopers from the Japanese-sponsored Bureau of Constabulary.[14]
Months later, on the night of August 25, 1944, a massive jailbreak of the confined prisoners of war occurred in the prison, led by Lieutenant Colonel Quintin Gellidon of the Fil-American Irregular Troops (FAIT). As the POWs feigned to do a nighttime chorale practice led by Fr. Jaime Neri, the prison lights were turned off, and the escapees ran outside through the prison's southernmost gate, Gate 5. They ran in the direction of Paliparan, Dasmariñas, Cavite, where the Erni's Guerrillas fetched them.[11] Sadly, ringleaders Alfonso de la Concepcion and Manuel Fruto were later captured by the Japanese and executed.[15]
Following the Invasion of Lingayen Gulf, the guerrillas enlisted the cooperation of the prison's second in command, Major Adriano Valdez, in securing the welfare of the POWs. This enabled the guerrillas to assist their imprisoned comrades with material and moral assistance.[File No. 307-26, Box 499, NAID No. 1431783, RG 407 The Philippine Archives Collection. 1] When the US 11th Airborne Division landed in south Luzon in late January 1945, the Japanese became restless and executed selected military prisoners by February 3, 1945. Prison physicians saved some POWs about to be executed by exchanging the names of the condemned with those who had recently died in prison.[16][17] By February 5, 1945, the Japanese decided to retreat from the Prison and turned over their control to Dequino. On the same day, the guerrillas arrived in Bilibid and started to liberate the POWs inside. Dioquino was arrested for collaboration, and Valdez was appointed Acting Director. The Hunters ROTC Guerrillas and President Quezon's Own Guerrillas were subsequently stationed near the prison complex.[18]
On February 6–7, 1945, the Japanese tried to retake the facility from the east. Learning about this, the guerrillas promptly engaged the Japanese, and killed several enemies.[19] Once the New Bilibid Prison was secured, the prison leadership offered the NBP Infirmary to be used as a field hospital for wounded Filipino and American troops. Thus, it was used for such purpose for the rest of the war, with guerrilla women's auxiliaries serving as nurse aides. Weeks later, the American internees rescued from the Raid on Los Baños were brought to the prison to be given first aid and initial accounting.[20] Misa was eventually reinstated as Prison Director and would hold the position until his death in 1949.[7]
When the war ended, NBP became a POW camp for Japanese soldiers and accused collaborators. President Laurel and his cohorts were also brought to the New Bilibid Prison after their extradition from Sugamo Prison in 1946.[21] The Japanese would be imprisoned inside the NBP until their release in 1953 following the executive clemency given by President Elpidio Quirino.[22][23][24]
Postwar era
From the end of World War II until 1953, Japanese war criminals were held within the prison, under Prison Superintendent Alfredo Bunye.[25]
The rise of Ferdinand Marcos saw the establishment of the Sampaguita Rehabilitation Center - later named Camp Sampaguita - within the NBP compound. It served both as the headquarters of the 225th Philippine Constabulary Company, and also as a stockade for Political Prisoners.[26] Sampaguita was the southernmost of four major clusters of concentration camps for political prisoners in the Greater Manila Area at the time, Sampaguita being the "S" in "A, B, C, and S" with the other letters representing Camps Aguinaldo ("A"), Bonifacio ("B"), and Crame ("C").[27]
Contemporary history
On June 5, 2014, Department of Justice Undersecretary Francisco Baraan III, supervising official on the Bureau of Corrections and the NBP said that the National Penitentiary will be moved to Barangay San Isidro in Laur, Nueva Ecija.[28][29]
In 2022, it was announced that there are plans to relocate the medium and maximum security prisons to Occidental Mindoro and the minimum security inmates to Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija.[30][31]
Facilities
The New Bilibid Prison consists of three compounds: the maximum security compound, which houses inmates serving a prison sentence of more than 20 years; the medium security compound, which houses those serving less than 20 years; and the minimum security compound, which houses those close to completing their sentence or who are at least 70 years old.[32]
In 1999, Ron Gluckman of Asiaweek wrote that due to the commercial activity and relative freedom of movement in most of the prison, the facility "seems more like a barangay in the Philippines than a prison."[33]
The execution chamber for inmates sentenced to death by electrocution was in Building 14, within the Maximum Security Compound. As of 2015, it is used to house maximum security prisoners. The former lethal injection chamber is now used as the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Museum.[34] Seven men were executed by lethal injection between 1999 and 2000.
Gluckman wrote that the men's death row in Building One, was uncharacteristic of the rest of the prison: "The place reeks of gas burners, sewage, sweat and fear."[33]
Recreational facilities
The prisoners pass the time in the basketball court in the penitentiary's gymnasium and are also engaged in the production of handicrafts. Various religious denominations are active in prison ministry, with Mass said daily in the prison's Roman Catholic chapel; a locale of the Iglesia Ni Cristo is also on the prison grounds. Religious groups, such as the Philippine Jesuit Prison Service, Caritas Manila, Seventh-day Adventist Church, and Amazing Grace Christian Ministries, also extend medical services to prisoners.[35] Research participants agree that the use of inmate leaders is an integral component of prison management in the MSC. Inmates can either assume custodial, administrative, and rehabilitation functions.[36]
Educational facilities
Educational facilities inside the compound provide elementary education, high school education, vocational training and adult literacy programs. It also provides a Bachelor's Degree in Commerce.[35] The New Bilibid Prison also houses a talipapâ (small wet and flea market) where prisoners can buy daily commodities.[37]
Katarungan Village
On September 5, 1991, PresidentCorazon C. Aquino issued Presidential Proclamation No. 792,[38] which was amended by Presidential Proclamation No. 120 on December 15, 1992,[39] to the effect that 104.22 hectares (257.5 acres) of land be developed into housing for employees of the Department of Justice and other government agencies. This housing project is known as the Katarungan ("Justice") Village.[40]
Jonel Nuezca, perpetrator of the 2020 Tarlac shooting. He died while imprisoned on November 30, 2021.
Luis Taruc, a communist who pleaded guilty to a charge of rebellion in 1954 and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.[49]:143–144 He was later sentenced to four life terms for additional crimes.[49]:144–147 He was pardoned in 1968 by then-President Ferdinand Marcos.[50]
Muntinlupa, officially the City of Muntinlupa, is a 1st class highly urbanized city in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 543,445 people.
The Raid on Los Baños in the Philippines, early Friday morning on 23 February 1945, was executed by a combined United States Army Airborne and Filipino guerrilla task force, resulting in the liberation of 2,147 Allied civilian and military internees from an agricultural school campus turned Japanese internment camp. The 250 Japanese in the garrison were killed. It has been celebrated as one of the most successful rescue operations in modern military history. It was the second precisely-executed raid by combined U.S.-Filipino forces within a month, following on the heels of the Raid at Cabanatuan at Luzon on 30 January, in which 522 Allied military POWs had been rescued. The air/sea/land raid was the subject of a 2015 nonfiction book, Rescue at Los Baños: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II, by New York Times bestselling author Bruce Henderson.
Capital punishment in the Philippines specifically, the death penalty, as a form of state-sponsored repression, was introduced and widely practiced by the Spanish government in the Philippines. A substantial number of Filipino national martyrs like Mariano Gómez, José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora, Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite, Thirteen Martyrs of Bagumbayan, Fifteen Martyrs of Bicol, Nineteen Martyrs of Aklan and Jose Rizal were executed by the Spanish government.
The Mangangate River, also referred to as the Alabang–Cupang River, is a river system in Muntinlupa, Philippines. It is one of 21 major tributaries of Laguna de Bay.
The Bureau of Corrections is an agency of the Department of Justice which is charged with the custody and rehabilitation of national offenders, commonly known as Persons Deprived of Liberty or PDL, who have been sentenced to three years of imprisonment or more. The agency has its headquarters in the New Bilibid Prison Reservation in Muntinlupa.
Paulino Torres Santos Sr. was a military officer who became the Commanding General of the Philippine Army from May 6 to December 31, 1936. Upon his retirement, he served as a civilian administrator under President Manuel L. Quezon. He is the namesake of the city of General Santos, which was renamed from Buayan in 1954.
The Hunters ROTC was a Filipino resistance group that fought against Axis forces in the Pacific theater. It was a guerrilla unit active during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, and was the main anti-Japanese resistance group active in the area near Manila, the capital of the Philippines. It was created upon the dissolution of the Philippine Military Academy.
The Palawan massacre occurred on 14 December 1944, during World War II, near the city of Puerto Princesa in the Philippine province of Palawan. Allied soldiers, imprisoned near the city, were killed by Imperial Japanese soldiers. Only eleven men managed to survive.
The Philippine National Police, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, National Bureau of Investigation led by Justice secretary Leila de Lima launched a series of raids on the New Bilibid Prison on December 15, 19, and 22, 2014, targeting drug lords allegedly operating inside the prison and to seize contraband reportedly in possession of some of the prison's inmates. Prohibited items such as methamphetamine chloride and other drug paraphernalia, inflatable sex dolls, a stripper bar and jacuzzi were found in air-conditioned villas of high-profile inmates. Police also found other contraband in the prison, such as firearms and bladed weapons, mobile phones, flat screen TVs, laptops, WIFi, luxury Patek Philippe, Cartier, and Rolex watches, a sauna, and over ₱2 million in cash from body searches of several inmates.
The Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) is a women's prison located in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines. The prison is operated by the Bureau of Corrections.
The Muntinlupa–Cavite Expressway (MCX), signed as E2 of the Philippine expressway network, is a 4-kilometer-long (2.5 mi) controlled-access toll expressway linking the southern province of Cavite to Muntinlupa in the Philippines.
Poblacion is one of the nine barangays of Muntinlupa, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is also the center of the city, hence the name which translates to center in Spanish.
The New Bilibid Prison drug trafficking scandal is a criminal investigation and political scandal concerning allegations of government involvement in illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila, Philippines. The allegations were made by President Rodrigo Duterte after announcing that the two top convicted drug lords in the country continued to run their drug rings from inside the national penitentiary with former administration officials and their local government cohorts as co-conspirators. On August 25, 2016, Duterte released a drug matrix showing the structure of drug trafficking operations at the New Bilibid Prison and identified the two former top officials of the Department of Justice, the former provincial governor and board member of Pangasinan, and the former Bureau of Corrections director as being involved in the Bilibid narcotics trade.
Jaybee Niño Manicad Sebastian was a Filipino high-profile inmate interned at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) who was convicted for kidnap-for-ransom and carnapping in 2009. He was known for running a prison gang and was allegedly involved in the illegal drug trade within the prison.
Jamboree Lake is a small recreational lake in Muntinlupa, Metro Manila, the Philippines. At 1.5 hectares, it is the smallest natural lake in the country located within the 587-hectare (1,450-acre) New Bilibid Prison Reservation. It is one of two lakes located entirely within the borders of Metro Manila, the other being the artificial La Mesa Dam and Reservoir in Quezon City.
The Muntinlupa Sunken Garden, also known as the New Bilibid Prison Sunken Garden and often shortened to simply Sunken Garden, is a large public urban park and a local government-protected zone in Muntinlupa, southern Metro Manila, the Philippines. It is an open grassy space on the southern shore of Jamboree Lake that is lower than the surrounding elevation in the New Bilibid Prison Reservation. The park is under the joint operation and management of the City Government of Muntinlupa and the Bureau of Corrections.
The Manila City Jail, popularly known as Old Bilibid Prison, is a detention center in Manila, Philippines. The jail is one of the most overcrowded in the world.
On July 2, 1991, Eldon Maguan, a 25 year old engineering student at De La Salle University, was shot in the head by Rolito Go, a 43 year old construction magnate in a road rage incident at Wilson Street in Little Baguio, San Juan, Metro Manila, the Philippines.
On October 3, 2022, Percy Lapid, a radio journalist and radio broadcaster, was shot dead while on his way home in Las Piñas, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Between 1947 and 1949, 73 trials were conducted by the newly independent Republic of the Philippines against 155 members of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy who committed war crimes during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. This resulted in the conviction of 138 individuals and the death sentence of 79 by December 28, 1949. The trials became a political showcase of the Philippines in the international community to conduct a fair trial against war crimes.
↑ Guillermo, Lucky, ed. (2015). Unsurrendered 2: The Hunters ROTC Guerrilla (The Story of Young and Brave Filipinos During WWII. AV Manila Creative Production Company.
↑ Camagay, Maria Luisa (2005). Kasaysayan ng Muntinlupa. Muntinlupa City: City Government of Muntinlupa.
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