CONGRESS approved on May 29, 2013, Republic Act 10592, amending the Revised Penal Act, providing for deductions for good conduct from the prison terms of convicted persons, specifying in detail the number of days to be deducted from their sentences.
Section 1 of the law, which has come to be known as the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law, includes the provision: “Provided, finally, that recidivists, habitual delinquents, escapees, and persons charged with heinous crimes are excluded from the coverage of this Act.”
It is this provision which seems to have been grossly violated in the cases of so many prisoners released by the Bureau of Prisons (BuCor) over the years, discovered only when news came out on the impending release of former Calauan, Laguna, Mayor Antonio Sanchez, as a beneficiary of the law, despite the fact that he had been sentenced to seven life terms on seven counts of rape and homicide and another two life terms for murder in another case.
The issue has since expanded in many directions. Director General Nicanor Faeldon has been relieved while the BuCor chief before him, Ronald dela Rosa, newly elected senator, is among the officials under investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman.
Ombudsman Samuel Sanchez has gone to the extent of asking former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas and former Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to explain why the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of the law did not stress the exclusion of heinous crime convicts as beneficiaries of the Good Conduct Time Allowance Act.
Many prisoners who were able to benefit from the GCTA have voluntarily returned to prison. They reportedly include some 2,000 convicted of heinous crimes. But there may be legitimate cases of prisoners entitled to benefit from the GCTA.
Congress has stepped into the case, with the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee led by Sen. Richard Gordon focusing on seeming irregularities in the running of the Bureau of Corrections, including drug trafficking and gambling within the premises. In the House, Rep. Romeo Jalosjos Jr., sponsor of the Ombudsman’s budget in the deliberations on the National Budget for 2020,said all present and past officials of the prison bureau are now under investigation.
The Bucor case has now spread far and wide, exposing corruption where it had not been expected and connections to officials who had not been suspected of involvement in such a s wide-ranging irregularity. And it all began because a core of officials deliberately chose to ignore a provision of an otherwise good law, the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law (GCTA), RA 10592.
