THE Philippines’ “institutional population” — which includes the incarcerated, members of religious communities, and residents of dormitories — declined 9.7% as of the end of May to 366,202, equivalent to 0.3% of the overall population, according to preliminary data from the Philippine Statistics Authority.
The number of institutional living quarters (ILQs), meanwhile, rose 40%, for a ratio of 12 persons per ILQ, against 19 persons per ILQ in 2015.
The institutionalized population includes 160,350 in corrective and penal facilities, while 72,211 were residents of hotels, motels, lodging houses, and dormitories and 31,828 resided in convents, nunneries, seminaries, and boarding schools.
Hotels, motels, lodging houses, and dormitories topped the ILQs tally in 2020 with 17,813 (59.7%) of the total. Convents, nunneries, seminaries, and boarding schools accounted for 3,865, followed by military camps and stations with 1,873. — Mariedel Irish U. Catilogo
