Good Conduct Time Allowance law controversy

Inmates at the New Bilibid Prison are asking the Supreme Court to review some provisions in the revised Implementing Rules and Regulations on the Good Conduct and Time Allowance Law (Republic Act 10592) that they say are disadvantageous to prisoners or are otherwise illegal.

The petition was filed before the SC last week.

Opposition Sen. Leila de Lima says the new implementing rules and regulations on Republic Act 10592 is a "remedial" move to cover up for "the most scandalous incident of corruption in Mr. Guevarra’s agency and this administration."

"With due respect to Sec. Guevarra, this is passing the buck to the Court. Any head of agency in charge of promulgating the IRR of a law should be convinced himself of the correctness of that IRR. He does not whistle in the dark because anyway, the Court is always there to chase away the ghosts this new IRR has created," De Lima says. 

"And for what reasons? To cover up the corruption of Faeldon and their negligence in the enforcement of the GCTA Law to the end that hardened criminals and multiple life sentence-servers did not easily go around the provisions of the law and buy GCTA credits with cash," she adds.

Josman Aznar and Anthony Uy, two of the four men convicted for the 1997 rape and murder of the Chiong sisters, have surrendered to Bureau of Corrections authorities.

Department of Justice spokesperson Markk Perete says that according to the raw information relayed to them, which they are still verifying, both freed convicts surrendered at Gate 1 of the New Bilibid Prison at around 6:30 p.m. today.

Two other convicts in the case, Ariel Balansag and Alberto Caño, surrendered last September 6.

A joint Department of Justice-Department of the Interior and Local Government panel has been given another 60 days from September 12 to work on the uniform policy and guidelines for the implementation of the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law.

The panel, officially called a joint review committee, completed its work on revised Implementing Rules and Regulations for GCTA—a mechanism to reward prisoners for good behavior by reducing their prison sentence—last week.

It has been found that close to 2,000 convicts of heinous crimes have been released—the Justice department says erroneously—through GCTA. The government says the convicts should have been excluded from GCTA release.

Sen. Leila De Lima, detained at the police headquarters on drug cases, says the Duterte administraton's attempt to blame her and former Interior Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas II on the release of convicts of heinous crimes—she and Roxas headed departments tasked with writing the implementing rules of the Good Conduct Time Allowance law—is an attempt to hide corruption in the Bureau of Corrections.

"Mr. Duterte’s logic (why he is blaming Sec. Mar and me) goes: Your IRR does not say that my people CANNOT release convicts who have committed heinous crimes. So they release them. Why fault us? Fault them (Sec. Mar and me)!" she says in a handwritten dispatch.

"This argument hides the reason for the questionable releases: BuCor and prison corruption," De Lima also says.

 De Lima says focus should be on whether the process for the early release of prisoners for good behavior was followed.

"Did they even go through the process mandated under the law, the IRR and the BuCor manual on the GCTA? Did the Management, Screening and Evaluation Committee (MSEC) created under the IRR do its job faithfully?" De Lima says.

Following the justice department's report that a fourth convict in the Chiong sisters' murder was freed under the GCTA law, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo tells Mrs. Chiong at a press conference, "Trust the president."

The Department of Justice confirms that a fourth convict in the murder of the Chiong sisters in 1997 was also freed under the GCTA law.

James Anthony Uy was among the seven who were imprisoned for the crime and the fourth convict to have enjoyed an early release supposedly because of good behavior while incarcerated.

Ariel Balansag and Alberto Caño surrendered to authorities last week following the call of President Rodrigo Duterte for the rearrest of heinous crime suspects freed under the law. A third released convict, Josman Aznar, was earlier reported to be following suit this week.

Some 65 freed convicts who committed heinous crimes surrendered to authorities as of Sunday morning, the Philippine National Police says.

Out of this number, those who were convicted of rape topped the list with 26 people surrendering followed by murder convicts with 19.

Opposition Sen. Leila de Lima says the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte should be blamed for the early release of heinous crime convicts under the Good Conduct Time Allowance law, not the previous administration.

"Ito ang pahayag ng tagapagsalita nito na si Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo pagkatapos na mabuking sila pareho ni Faeldon – si Panelo sa kanyang sulat sa Board of Pardons and Parole na bigyan ng 'preferential' na tugon ang hiling ni ex-Mayor Sanchez na mapalaya na siya at si Faeldon naman ay sa kanyang pag-amin na siya nga ang lumagda sa Memorandum of Release para kay Sanchez na klarong hindi karapat-dapat gantimpalaan ng GCTA," De Lima says in a statement. 

"Ang kakapal ng mga apog nila!" she adds. 

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra says that his department has directed the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation to issue lookout bulletins for all the convicts who had been released amid the implementation of the Good Conduct Time Allowance law.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra tells senators his department has issued instructions to the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation to issue lookout bulletins for all the release convicts | @PaoloSRomero pic.twitter.com/gitNz7m1A2

— The Philippine Star (@PhilippineStar) September 5, 2019

The Good Conduct Time Allowance law was placed on the spotlight after the Department of Justice said convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez may walk free within the next two months due to good behavior. Monitor this page for updates on the controversial implementation of the law.