A National Justice Information System that would link into one network all data of prisoners and cases pending before the courts and the prosecutors’ offices will be launched today at 3 p.m. at the historic landmark Manila Hotel.
Involved in the NJIS are the Supreme Court, Department of Justice, Department of Interior and Local Government, Department of Information and Communications Technology, and the Dangerous Drugs Board.
Agencies under these departments are the Bureau of Immigration, Bureau of Corrections, and Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.
Chief Justice Diosdado M. Peralta, DoJ Secretary Menardo I. Guevarra, DILG Secretary Eduardo M. Ano, DICT Secretary Gregorio B. Honasan II, and DDB Chairman Catalino S. Cuy are set to sign the memorandum of agreements on the NJIS.
DoJ Undersecretary Markk Perete said “the NJIS is essentially an information of data portal or network where a lot of different systems relating to prisoners, cases being handled by the Judiciary, to research materials on criminal and other prosecutions, among others, will be housed.”
Perete also said the NJIS will be an online system where data would be encoded and then uploaded.
Citing an example, he said that “the BJMP under the DILG will digitize its data on prisoners, including the length of stay in jails and sentence imposed by the courts, and upload them into a system that would be shared by everyone involved in the NJIS.”
He said the NJIS would be immediately operational. To be incorporated in the software component are the amended implementing rules and regulations on the prisoners’ Good Conduct Time Allowance.
At the height of the controversy over the implementation of GCTA last year, it was discovered that prisoners’ records in the BJMP and the BuCor do not match.
The mismatch caused the problems in the determination of a prisoner’s stay in the jail, Perete said. (Rey Panaligan)
