Past Directors

LT GEORGE M WOLFE
Director
1904 – 1910

LT. GEORGE M. WOLFE was an officer of the United States Expeditionary Force under the American governor general in the Philippines, Luke Wright.

There was no Bureau of Prisons at the time.  Areas were merely set aside where convicts were sent to serve their sentence. The Americans studied the  archipelago and    developed    a     penal settlement in Palawan, where they formulated a program for offenders.  On November 16, 1904, they authorized the establishment of the penal settlement called Iuhit and it was later renamed Iwahig.

Wolfe became the first Superintendent of Iwahig.  Under his leadership, Iwahig which started with a land area of 22 acres, became a depository for prisoners who could not be accommodated at the Old Bilibid Prison.  Iwahig also became a center for the development of trends in the progressive treatment of prisoners.        

In 1907, the Philippine Commission passed Act No. 1723, which further defined the status of the Iwahig settlement as a penal institution.