Repeal good conduct law, rearrest freed convicts
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 16:52:15 +0000
UNFORTUNATELY for both the legislative and executive branches of the government, the firing of
Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director Nicanor Faeldon will not suffice to douse the fire ignited by the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law scandal.
Faeldon has deservedly gotten his walking papers, but the harm he has done at BuCor will linger after his departure. There is much to fix.
More challenging work faces the government today:
First, Congress should start action to repeal Republic Act (RA) 10592 — the GCTA Law. Passage of this law precipitated the mess. Therefore, recall of this poorly crafted law should be of the highest priority, dwarfing all considerations of blame-passing and credit-grabbing in the legislature
Second, the executive, through the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior and Local
Government, should fully implement President Rodrigo Duterte’s order for the rearrest of all convicts who were irregularly and illegally freed under the GCTA Law.
Congress will do the nation a service by acknowledging upfront the glaring shortcomings of the law, and its responsibility for its enactment.
Lawmakers, who want to make a political capital of the scandal, are well-advised to recognize that both the House and the Senate bear responsibility for the law.
The GCTA Law originated in the House, but it was the Senate that expanded it in a way that made convicts who had committed heinous crimes eligible for release under it.
House Bill 417 and Senate Bill (SB) 3064 were introduced in the 15th Congress and consolidated to become RA 10592, which was signed into law by then-President Benigno Aquino 3rd on May 29, 2013.
A House member has revealed that the longer good behavior allowance was not part of the original bill, whose main objective was to make “our justice system reformative, not retributive.”
The Senate version of the law became the basis of RA 10592. In fact, they had the same title: “An Act amending Articles 29, 94, 97, 98, and 99 of Act No. 3815, as amended, otherwise known as the Revised Penal Code.”
Under SB 3064, the senators expanded good conduct allowance from five days to 20 days per month during the first two years of imprisonment, from eight days to 23 days from the third year to the fifth year, from 11 days to 25 days from the sixth year to the 10th year, and from 15 to 30 days during succeeding years.
There is an additional good behavior allowance of 15 days “for each month of study, teaching or mentoring service time rendered.”
One congressman urged the current Senate to review the GCTA Law. “They were so generous in giving all kinds of good conduct allowances. If all those GCTAs are given, a convict may end up walking out of prison a few days after walking in,” he said.
This opened the prison gates to abuse and corruption. Aside from Sanchez, more than 11,000 other convicts reportedly became entitled to GCTA.
Consequently, the legislative remedy is indisputably the repeal of RA 10592.
Repeal of the law will go further in righting the situation than the firing of Faeldon.
The evident preferential treatment of certain unqualified and wealthy convicts must end with his removal
And the President should stop himself from rescuing Faeldon again and installing him in another civilian post.
In 2017, Faeldon, a former Navy mutineer alongside Antonio Trillanes 4th, was tagged in the P6.4-billion shabu shipment that slipped past the Bureau of Customs, which he then headed. He resigned as Customs chief, but he was reappointed as the deputy administrator of the Office of Civil Defense. And then he was moved to the Bureau of Corrections.
The story of the GCTA scandal is of a poorly crafted law, administered by incompetent and possibly corrupt officials, and then sadly worsened by the President’s partiality for former military men turned-civilian officials.
There are plenty of lessons in this affair that the nation must learn from.