Duterte orders total revamp at BuCor

MANILA, Philippines — President Duterte has ordered the “total revamp” of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), which is under fire for the premature release of heinous crime convicts and the alleged giving of perks to moneyed inmates.

Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said Duterte wanted a top-to-bottom revamp to cleanse the bureau of corruption.

“(It’s a) total revamp in the Bureau of Corrections. He (Duterte) told me the guards there would be transferred to the provinces. He will transfer the provincial guards to the BuCor,” Panelo told reporters yesterday in Malacañang.

Panelo said career officials of the bureau would be placed on floating status. The revamp would give newly appointed BuCor chief Gerald Bantag a free hand to select people who would work with him, he added.

It was unclear whether the revamp would affect the deployment of Special Action Force members at the national penitentiary.

The bureau has been placed under scrutiny after it was revealed that 1,914 heinous crime convicts were released even if they are not qualified to benefit from the law on Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA). The law, which was signed in 2013, reduces the jail time of convicts who display good behavior.

In recent Senate hearings on the GCTA law, former BuCor officials detailed supposed irregularities at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa, including allowing high-profile inmates to avail themselves of the services of female entertainers, the selling of gadgets, alcohol and cigarettes to inmates, round-the-clock gambling inside prison cells and the pocketing of the inmates’ food budget by corrupt officials.

The former officials also detailed the alleged pooling of inmates’ money to be given to newly appointed BuCor chiefs, and the supposed “hospital passes for sale” scheme. 

Last Tuesday, Malacañang announced the appointment of Bantag as corrections chief as part of the effort to rid the bureau of irregularities.

Bantag, regional director of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) and a former Parañaque City Jail warden, replaced Nicanor Faeldon, who was fired for disobeying Duterte’s order not to release high-profile convicts under the GCTA law. 

Bantag made headlines in 2016 when a grenade killed 10 inmates at the Parañaque jail under his watch. He was charged with ten counts of murder in connection with the incident.

Last Tuesday, Duterte said Bantag’s murder case has been downgraded to homicide but the case remains unresolved. 

“Since there is no conviction yet, in obedience to the rule of the presumption of innocence, I gave him a new job,” the President told reporters. 

“I think the case is in court. He’s facing homicide charges. I don’t think that he did it. If he did, then he may be convicted. But in the meantime, gusto ko siya kasi nagtatapon ng granada daw (I like him because he reportedly throws grenades).” 

Bounty in the budget

Meanwhile, House ways and means committee chairman Rep. Joey Salceda said the cash reward for the arrest of convicts who were prematurely released and did not surrender before the Sept. 19 deadline can be included in next year’s budget. 

Duterte has said he would offer P1 million for the arrest of each convict who refuses to turn himself over to authorities. Close to 2,000 heinous crime inmates were released prematurely, according to the corrections bureau. 

“Definitely. It can be addressed to the department errata,” Salceda said at a press briefing yesterday in Malacañang. 

“At any point during the budget process the executive may propose amendments. For as long as one congressman proposes it,” he added.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra yesterday also ordered Bantag to clean up the mess created by the early release of convicted prisoners through GCTA. 

Guevarra said he met Bantag for the first time yesterday morning and he gave three instructions to the new BuCor chief to focus on: clean up the GCTA fiasco, fully computerize the bureau and stop the illegal drug trade in the prison. 

As to when he would assume the post as BuCor chief and if he would take his oath before him, Guevarra said it is up to Bantag to decide.

Guevarra said he had never met Bantag before since he was under the BJMP, which is under the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

Public outcry started when scandal over the implementation of the GCTA law was exposed after former BuCor chief Faeldon approved the release of convicted rapist-murderer Antonio Sanchez, a former mayor of Calauan, Laguna, and his cohorts who were sentenced with seven life terms for the rape-slay of University of the Philippines in Los Baños student Mary Eileen Sarmenta and the murder of her friend Allan Gomez in 1993.

It raised the question on who among the persons deprived of liberty should qualify for reduction of prison sentence.

In the revised implementing rules and regulations of Republic Act 10592 (expanded GCTA law) signed last Sept. 16, it excluded four types of convicts to benefit from reduction of sentence: those convicted of heinous crimes, recidivists, habitual delinquents and escapees. 

It was also reported that from 2013, there had been 1,914 convicts convicted of heinous crimes who were prematurely released from prison. President Duterte ordered them to surrender, with today as deadline. 

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said yesterday that the “GCTA-for-sale” scandal has exposed the high cost to taxpayers of maintaining the country’s prisons that is worsened by the slow justice system.

Based on the proposed P18.6-billion budget of BJMP for 2020, the annual cost of housing, feeding, guarding and transporting one detainee will be about P101,887.

Prison population at the BJMP is estimated to reach 182,556 next year. The bureau runs jails for detainees or those whose cases are still pending in courts.

As the BuCor takes care of over 47,000, the cost of handling one inmate is P91,407 annually. BuCor, which sought a budget of P4.3 billion for next year, runs the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City and other penitentiaries in the regions.

A prisoner has an annual food budget of P25,550 and P5,475 for medicine.

“The billions of pesos we pay for our prisons is the annual national penalty we pay for our slow justice system,” Recto said.

“But we can only decongest our jails, especially the ones run by BJMP, which is packing four times more prisoners per square meter of cell space than what is ideal, if the wheels of justice will turn faster, by more hands who will move it,” he said.

He said decongesting the prisons can be done if the government hires more prosecutors and gives them enough resources as each one grapples with an average of 196 cases; and more Public Attorney’s Office lawyers, who have their hands full attending to 5,237 clients each. 

“And if we can finally fill the hundreds of vacancies in our lower courts and modernize their facilities at the same time,” Recto said. – With Evelyn Macairan, Paolo Romero