EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROGRAMS

      Rehabilitation can be facilitated by improving an inmate’s academic and job skills. The BuCor offers technical and practical skills through formal and non-formal education. Majority of the inmates are poorly educated. They are either elementary school drop outs and have not even finished primary school, or illiterate. Only a few earned a college degree. Most of the inmates were agricultural workers or were engaged in low-income professions. Prison education amounts to remedial schooling designed to prepare inmates to obtain basic skills in reading, writing and mathematics. The National Penitentiary has a college degree program and a tertiary degree correspondence course, in addition to the regular secondary and compulsory basic literacy classes. Inmates are strongly encouraged by the BuCor authorities to enroll while serving their sentence and to advance their academic skills.

      Vocational training and social education focus on job readiness. Vocational programs are incorporated into job assignments and serve as on-the-job training. The goal is to provide inmates with skills that will improve their eligibility for jobs upon release. Most prison vocational training is geared toward traditional blue-collar employment in areas such as electronics, auto mechanics, handicrafts-making, arts and computer literacy.

      The Muntinlupa Juvenile Training Center caters to juvenile offenders. Japan International Cooperative Agency (JICA) provided the facilities, equipment and continuously supports the center in its pilot program to provide vocational trainings for juvenile offenders.

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