Books offer a novel way to counter prison overcrowding in the Philippines

The initiative supported by the UN office on Drugs and Crime (

) in the Philippines is also expected to help ease chronic overcrowding in detention centres across the Southeast Asian nation.

Dave*, who is one month into a six-month sentence, spends up to eight hours a day in the library of the Iligan City Jail.

He’s currently engrossed in a graphic novel called El Filibusterismo, an adaptation of a story by the revered Filipino…