Dancing Behind Bars

Prisoner rehabilitation has been a long-term problem all over the world. Oftentimes, instead of being rehabilitated, prisoners learn more bad tricks on their sleeves in jails.

Jails in China and India have imposed yoga, Thailand prisoners have created their own world cup and Indonesia has put Buddhist worship rooms to further rehabilitation.

In the Philippines, the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu City has become world-famous for its dancing inmates that they have been viewed as dancers instead of prisoners.

Former jail consultant and governor’s brother, Byron Garcia, was said to have originally wanted to introduce a program at Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) where inmates would exercise for an hour each day. He saw waves of prisoners in the exercise yard and thought it looked good.

Garcia’s first upload to www.youtube.com of prisoner choreography was the Algorithm March, but this was almost entirely ignored. The next upload, Thriller, became viral. The million views prompted even foreign media to come. As of May 2011, the views count to 47,824,175.