All 700 guards of the maximum security compound at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) have been replaced as part of an internal cleansing of personnel by Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. He also dismissed the superintendent, replacing him with the first female head of the compound, and intends to ban lockers in stations and pockets in uniforms to prevent BuCor personnel from accepting bribes.

On Wednesday, Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. replaced all 700 guards of the New Bilibid Prison’s (NBP) maximum security compound as part of his reform agenda for the bureau. Catapang also relieved Corrections Chief Insp. Lucio Guevarra, the superintendent of the NBP maximum security compound, and replaced him with Corrections Senior Insp. Purificacion Hari, the first woman to head the compound in recent history. Catapang had long sought to replace the guards at NBP’s maximum security compound, noting that some of them committed “outright” violations of BuCor rules and regulations; some were caught tampering with the CCTV cameras to avoid being observed by their superiors, and others were also reported to have hidden the money they received as bribes in their locker rooms. The 700 BuCor guards will be replaced by 300 new corrections officers and 35 more senior officers from the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan province.