House holds hearing on ‘massive jailbreak’ sans Faeldon
Credit to Author: GLEE JALEA| Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2019 05:15:07 +0000
BUREAU of Corrections Director General Nicanor Faeldon was a no show at the House of Representatives’ inquiry into the early release of convicts on Tuesday but lawmakers proceeded with the hearing anyway.
Only Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) Chief Allan Sullano Iral confirmed his presence before the committee on justice that discussed the “massive jailbreak” of thousands of high-profile and ordinary inmates by virtue of yhe Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) that frees prisoners with good behavior.
Faeldon is at the Senate, which is holding a similar inquiry for the second straight day.
Leyte 3rd District Rep. Vicente Veloso, committee chairman, presided over the hearing on the retroactive application of the GCTA or Republic Act (RA) 10952 with the undersecretaries and other officials of BuCor and the Department of Justice (DoJ).
“There is a concurrence of opinion from all sectors that the GCTA law does not apply to persons convicted of heinous offenses. In other words, there is a massive jailbreak with the conspiracy and consent of prison officials to the tune of more than 2,000,” said Albay 1st District Edcel Lagman.
“It is virtually a jailbreak, not on the part of the inmates but the conspiracy of officials no less than the director general of BuCor, Nicanor Faeldon,” Lagman noted.
BuCor officials cited its official data which showed that over 2,160 prisoners convicted of heinous crimes were released from 2013 to 2019 from the time of the implementation of the GCTA.
“As far as the heinous crime convicts who were released before the full service of their terms, the DoJ has the obligation to correct the mistake and arrest the released and incarcerate them again,” said Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta (PBA) Partylist Rep. Jericho Nograles.
Nograles had asked the justice panel to direct the BuCor to submit the list of all members of the Management Screening and Evaluation Committee (MSEC) over the past years and the names of heinous crimes convicts who have been recommended for release.
The partylist lawmaker said that the procedures of the MSEC should be understood first before putting the blame on other agencies and top officials.
“What is apparent so far is that there is a clash of purposes and interpretation of the law. Congress intended to reward good prisoners. DoJ and DILG (Department of Interior and Local Government) wanted to implement the law but dropped the ball. BuCor wanted to decrease the number of prisoners,” Nograles said.