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Chaplains ask govt to make prisons at par with UN standards


Prison chaplains and jail workers asked the government on Wednesday to improve prison environments and make them at par with United Nations (UN) standards. In an article posted Wednesday on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) news site, they also asked Church leaders to address the concerns of jailed offenders by assigning prison chaplains who will administer to them. “The problems of the prison situation are far more serious now than at any other time in the long history of our involvement in prison ministry," said the chaplains and workers, who represented the Philippines at the 6th International Prison Chaplains’ Association Worldwide Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. According to the chaplains, the government must implement UN standards, principles, covenants and recommendations on the treatment of prisoners. Government must also promote the "culture of life" in the prisons, they added. They noted prisoners have been deprived of their most basic rights including ventilation, hygiene and food, mainly due to congestion. The other concerns they raised include: * putting young offenders together with adult offenders inside the jails; * punishment and torture, and * lack of access to a good defense of the cases. “There were also corruption in the criminal justice system not to mention the biases and discrimination against vulnerable sectors of society; long and life sentences; executions and death penalty; and increase in number of foreign prisoners due to drug trafficking and large scale migration trends," they added. –VVP, GMANews.TV

Tags: prison, jail, cbcp
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