Uniform prison manual expected to decongest inmate population
Government officials expect a 20 percent decrease in the population of inmates with the launching of the first uniform guideline specifying the time allowances for service of sentence of persons deprived of liberty (PDL).
The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) Joint Committee launched yesterday, Dec. 1, the Uniform Manual on Time Allowances and Service of Sentence which will be used by both the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP).
The decongestion will be the effect of this uniform manual,” Justice Undersecretary Reynante Orceo, chairman of the DOJ-DILG Joint Committee, told reporters.
Orceo estimates that jail facilities will get decongested by 20 percent because of the uniform manual.
Prior the manual, Orceo lamented that “the Bureau of Corrections and the BJMP, the local jails, have different approaches on how to give time allowances to persons deprived of liberty.”
“So what happened in the process is we had a dysfunctional administration of justice that is detrimental to the person deprived of liberty,” he pointed out.
He said that the BJMP has a different computation of time and that is not automatically credited as part of the sentence when the persons are convicted and transferred to the Bureau of Corrections.
The BJMP, which is under the DILG, handles jail facilities where persons facing trial are detained. The BUCOR, which is under the DOJ, overseas penal colonies where convicted individuals serve time.
Now there is only one system for the two bureaus for the benefit of PDLs, said Orceo.
The undersecretary said training on how to compute and how to give time allowances will be conducted.
The uniform manual was created pursuant to Republic Act 10592, the act amending several provisions of the Revised Penal Code (RPC).
The manual indicates that the law authorizes the credit of preventive imprisonment and a revision of good conduct time allowance of PDLs.