Where 518 Inmates Sleep in Space for 170, and Gangs Hold It Together

It is astonishing what one photograph can still convey, in this age when we are saturated with photographic imagery. The article is journalistic in the best sense, and the integration with the pictures is top notch. Hats off to Ms. Morales and Ms. Almendral for braving the depths of this hellish netherworld. In the sweltering heat and humidity, with the near crush of bodies and, likely, the corresponding lack of hygiene and lapsed sanitation, the smell alone must have been overpowering (notice the respirators worn by the guys doing inspection). But the twin whammy of the perversely beautiful visuals and the psychology of near despair written on the faces is too much to fathom in personal terms. Knowing that it could be years before anything happens in your favor, and that, in the meantime, your fate depends on bribes and the justice meted out by a gang boss...it isn't difficult to imagine; it is just too horrific to contemplate for very long. The opening shot looks, at first glance, like a painting by Delacroix. If I saw this in a movie or read about it in a novel, I would process it differently. In this journalistic format, knowing that these are not actors, it gets past my defenses. Hard not to feel sympathy for these men! I don't know who's a criminal and who isn't. And that's the other disturbing element: by the time it gets to this, guilt/innocence are no longer relevant. It is just rock bottom humanity, with an overlay of hope in the extra-human. Notice the shrine.

This is a tragic waste of human resources and it is happening in many countries all over the world particularly in third world countries. Most governments neither have the money nor expertise to run prisons. Often the system is corrupt to the bone and totally incompetent to look after prisoners. We have plenty of islands all over the world, many of them inhabited. We can use them as open prison. "Inmates" can move around freely ,do various works such as agriculture, cook their own food ,in short ,look after themselves. Of course, there will be various problems but what can be worse than this ? It can work. That's how Australia was founded.

This is why governments are overthrown and revolutions occur - like our American Revolution - when the government, judges and police don't care about the people to whom they took their "oaths" of office. International bodies should investigate and shun the current government of Philippines - and American Filipinos should say something, too, to fix this disgraceful treatment of desperate people caged like animals - and finding grace in their communal acts of joint survival.

Not just the less developed world. Here in England (yes, England - can't comment on rest of UK), we have some jails officially classified as 'out of control', hotbeds of gang violence, drug abuse and severe mental illness. Places where the prison staff avoid contact with inmates and work in fear. Where outside gangs threaten the families of individual guards. Firing the governors and senior staff provides no permanent solution, nor does the fact that it's now almost impossible to recruit new prison staff. Is the global starvation of prison services a consequence of neoliberalism? Over here, jails have been corporatised, now largely run by private companies. The old social responsibility of jail providing both punishment AND rehabilitation is gone - the private prisons focus on punishment, at the cheapest possible price.

No matter what problems you are having in life, remind yourself that there are those are in much worse places, and you will find a lot to be thankful for. Can't believe there are humans, like you and me, living in such conditions. Thank you NYT for sharing a glimpse of that life, if anything for us to appreciate what we have. If nothing else then just a space in which to breathe.

This is why I am ashamed and horrified that the U.S., under former Ambassador Nikki Haley, stepped down from the U.S. Human Rights Council. Trump has made it clear he doesn't care, about human rights or the United State's historical role supporting human rights. So there's no leverage being brought to bear on Duerte's murderous reign. https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/678348210/opinion-5-ways-the-u-s-retreated-from-the-world-stage-under-trump-this-year

'Someone godly,” Mr. Mendiola said, “who cares about people, wants to do the right thing and is judicious in his discipline.”' The Philippines, the Russian Federation, PRC and the USA would benefit from somebody like Mr Mendiola in charge. As indeed we would here in Oz. Look at the world's leaders. Not just democratically elected political leaders, but the leaders of the organised religions, the men and rarely women who lead the world's biggest firms. What do we see? We see a dearth of good quality leaders. We see men consumed by greed, by their avarice and by their lust for power. We see men corrupted by their power, men who are too cowardly and too incompetent to do the right thing. There are now 7.6 billion of us humans competing for access for scant resources on our overheating planet, with our numbers increasing every day. What does it say about us a species that our leaders are so third rate?

I thought I was looking at a painting.

This is the world brought up you by men like Duterte and Donald Trump.

Lack of moral values, institutional barbarism, justice inefficiencies,... sounds like a Trump presidency.

What an insane way to treat individuals. They will come out much worse then when they entered doesn’t make you want to visit the Phillipines. Military dictatorships mistreating the civilians . Sounds like Trump is happy.

I live in Manila so I know that this has been the situation in prisons here for many years, long before Duterte. It just got worse since he came to power as they are sending more people to jail now. The underlying reason for the overcrowding is the extremely slow court system. People who would be sent perhaps for a month in jail end up staying in prisons like this for years. A typical court case has a hearing in front of the judge every six months only and each hearing last perhaps 20 to 30 minutes and this can go on for ever. The famous court cases against Imelda Marcos (still not in prison) went on for around 20 years!

So, according to the article,the typical prisoner is a 15 year old who did nothing wrong? Pretty bad place.

Duterte is an international criminal and should be arrested and taken to The Hague and charged with mass murder and crimes against humanity.

The overcrowding is much worse now, but when I visited the Manila Jail ~ 1976, conditions were already appalling. A common punishment consisted of placing men in corrugated steel boxes without air holes out in the brutally hot sun for days at a time. The boxes were scattered all around the yard for anyone--inmates or visitors--to see.

The photographs are amazing!

It’s not much different in other Third World countries.

Imaging having to be locked-up in prisons run by inmates to experience law and order, peace and comfort. In many more impoverished American communities, citizen group Guardian Angel-style organizations must be utilized to keep order and maintain peace until our so-called “Democracy” is put on notice for certain overthrow. The demise of Democracies is rapidly approaching … Four score and seven years after America’s founding in 1776, there was still one … and now there are only 19 democracies across the planet … soon we will be back to none.

My god, what a photo! Horrifying, but looks like a painting. The photo is a work of art, however sad.

Sanitation would be impossible. Infections must be rampant, and communicated outside the prison by those who are released. Very degrading to society that this exists.

Actually, prisons in the US may not be as overcrowded as those in the article, but there certainly is a less, shall we say "humane" element in them than in this almost "self-run" prison that looks like walled fortress outside with separate neighborhoods or villages and spaces where networks of "friends," "neighbors" and "families" provide solidarity, company and services (and enemies too). Even the "uniforms," a simple T-shirt and shorts, seem pretty informal and more humane than orange jumpsuits in many prisons here, their only restriction apparently being the color yellow. Material conditions in slums outside are pretty dire for most of this people too.The more surveilled, regulated and isolated (and less crowded) inmates are (as in the panopticons of modern prisons) the more alienating and oppressive the place becomes. Btw, I was struck by the shrine in the midst of the "dorm," and the spare fan. The justice system is a more serious issue. The pre-trial indefinite detention practice is appalling.I wonder what kind of access to counsel, if any, they even have.

The accommodations are horrific. The relative peace is a product of homogeneity.

this is americas future if trump has his way.

There would be some who say that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, and this is an example. Does Duterte, who recently confessed to rape, think this I’d making inroads into the Phillipines drug problems? Is this, together with police killing ‘suspected’ drug traffickers on the spot, making a difference? A lack of moral thinking, together with institutionised corruption, leads to these ends. Outrageous.

The barbarity of very lengthy pre-trial incarceration and prison overcrowding can be be found at your doorstep at Rikers Island and The Tombs. Just a little less 3rd Worldish.

Rodrigo Duterte is a war criminal. He is almost certainly guilty of genocide, and should be charged in The World Court in The Hague, then tried, and if found guilty, capital punishment would "serve him well"; and the rightly.

Looking at these conditions, I'm reminded that we are still operating Guantanomo. Are reporters allowed to take pictures there or talk to the prisoners? Are the jailers (e.g., Bush, Rumsfeld, Sanchez, Miller, etc) ever held accountable for the rights violations and conditions?

That's inhumane.

Yes, the world and the Philippines are way too overpopulated. Give it another 50 years and they'll be stacking prisoners like cord wood. Too many people.

This is disgusting! This does not look like a prison, it looks like a homeless camp. Just the other day I was watching a video about Halden a maximum security prison in Norway that has been called the best prison in the world. It is amazing that both are even prisons, based on how different they look.

Pretty scary photo, pretty sure the subjects didn't sign (or weren't asked to sign) release forms; I'll bet the photographer bribed a guard or jail official--that's how it works in those places, you know. As ghastly as the photo and the story are, they underscore the old age-old reality: Free will exists in all societies, including those of the second and third worlds; don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

It's a Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump world. The U.S. currently holds about 2,000 children in cages, after separating the children from their parents, whom the white, Christian, pro-life U.S. president calls "breeding animals." And these children of "breeding animals" may never be sent home to their parents because the U.S. government doesn't know which children belong to which parents.

What an absolutely breathtaking image of horror. One of the best photos I have ever seen in my life.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik is also the name of an 80's techno band. What a small world we live in.

I'd like to think you got permission from each prisoner whose easily identifiable photo you published here, but I doubt it. The lack of privacy inside is deplorable, but these are human beings with real lives and families outside too.

Thought at first this was one of the so-called president's "detention centers." Since the public/journalists are excluded, I wonder how different they are from his? At least the children have clean cages in 'Merican gulags.

No wonder Trump loves Duterte.

Zero population growth is the planet and civil societies only chance.

Whenever I get myself worked up about how dogs are treated in places where they are eaten, I have to remind myself how those places treat humans. There are often similarities.