BAGUIO CITY – The Baguio City Jail-Female Dorm (BCJ-FD) has been implementing programs meant to ensure the safety of persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), including the 93 females under its care.

The BCJ-FD said it is undertaking measures to enhance public safety by ensuring the safekeeping, and implementing various programs for the welfare and development of the PDLs while awaiting for the disposition of their cases.
JSInsp. Vilma Fangsilat, BCJ-FD officer-in-charge, said 70 percent of the PDLs are detained due to violation of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2022 while the rest are for estafa, illegal recruitment and homicide.
Fangsilat said, to maintain the BCJ-FD’s status as a ‘drug-free facility’, her office conducts surprise and random drug testing on the PDLs and its personnel including implementing an intensified thorough search of the banned substance.
“Their cases (PDLs) are all being acted upon by the authorities specially the courts who are making ways and means for the speedy disposition of their cases in accordance with law notwithstanding the pandemic we are currently experiencing,” Fangsilat said.
This, Fangsilat stressed, is in order to impose the appropriate penalty to those who are found guilty and free those not guilty to prevent the miscarriage of justice.
The programs do not only cater to PDLs but also their families and the BCJ-FD is currently linked with the DSWD’s Regional Haven for Women and Girls, Daughters of Mary Immaculate International-Our Lady of the Atonement Cathedral, and the Shalom Jewish Ministry International.
She added that her office has entered into a memorandum of agreement with TESDA-Baguio City School of Arts and Trades to continuously provide PDLs with livelihood trainings that they could use upon their release.