"Freedom has a price."
"Freedom has a price."
You cannot say the Philippines is not a kind and caring society.
Hardened criminals—murderers, serial rapists, drug lords and of course, plunderers—are given a second lease on life, literally and figuratively.
Under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippines long ago did away with imposing death penalty. Under the old system, plunderers would have been subjected to lethal injection, just like murderers, rapists, and drug lords.
Under the present setup, life-termers, usually the dregs of society, are released even before their full terms in prison are served. They “graduate” before finishing their terms on the lame excuse of “good conduct.”
Ignore the fact that hardened criminals and good conduct are a contradiction in terms. The policy of kindness to cloistered animals of the two-legged variety was started by the unlamented President Benigno Simeon (BS) Cojuangco Aquino III.
The original idea, it seems to me, was to set free jailed communist leaders who wanted to take over the government. To avoid looking like a piece of class legislation, the law on kindness to prisoners was applied to everyone. You can say our kind of justice is democratic and egalitarian.
President Aquino signed Republic Act 10592 or the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law on May 29, 2013. His secretary of justice, Leila de Lima, issued the implementing rules and regulations on Dec. 12, 2014.
Data compiled by the office of Senator Richard Gordon, chair of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, is very revealing. Our government people, especially those who are supposed to dispense justice or wear “justice” on their lapels on blouses, are very kind, indeed.
A former human rights official, Lima worked hard in favor of the hardened criminals behind bars. During her watch as DOJ chief, in 63 months, or five years and three months, the largest display of humanity towards humans of a different kind took place—a total 20,198 convicts were released, largely on the ground of “good conduct.”
The large-scale releases of prison internees ground to a virtual halt under De Lima’s successor, Alfredo Caguioa. Only 1,211 prisoners were released during Caguioa’s four months in office, from Oct. 12, 2015 to Jan. 21, 2016.
The mass prisoner breakout picked up pace under Aquino’s last justice secretary, Emmanuel Caparas—2,278 let loose in five months, from Jan. 22, 2016 to June 30, 2016. Caparas’s average per month—455.6 prisoners, the highest monthly average releases among Aquino’s three DOF chiefs from July 2010 to June 30, 2016.
President Duterte’s two justice secretaries were not remiss in their display of humanity towards prisoners, either. State-sponsored jailbreaks continued even more feverishly.
Under the controversial Vitaliano Aguirre, the second largest batch of GCTA releases, 9,294, was recorded, from July 2016 to March 2018, or an average of 442.5 prisoner releases per month in 21 months.
The incumbent Menardo Guevarra was not to be outdone. In his first 17 months as DOJ chief, from April 2018 til today, 8,571 prisoners were released on good conduct allowance, a monthly average in 17 months of 504.1—the highest among the five most recent justice secretaries. In fact, Guevarra’s monthly average number of releases is the highest ever on record.
Thus, under Duterte’s two DOJ heads, Aguirre and the incumbent Menardo, 17,865 prisoners were freed on GCTA in just three years. That’s more than the number released by De Lima in her first three years as justice secretary.
This makes Duterte a very kind president—towards prisoners. It is ironic, considering that the former Davao mayor of 23 years has a reputation of being a killer president.
The official figures on drug killings, under Duterte, are about 5,500 in three years. That means Duterte has released over three times more prisoners than the number killed in the state’s anti-drugs war—5,500 vs.17,865. The 5,500 dead should have been convicted and made to serve time in prison.
The moral in this narrative: If you are being arrested for being an illegal drugs suspect or being a suspect for some equally heinous crime, 1. surrender, 2. do not fight back, 3. get yourself convicted, and 4. don the prison orange uniform. Inside a penal colony, life could be better than life as a fugitive from justice.
Inside the national penitentiary, try to be good. Don’t hobnob with your fellow drug lords. Do not continue to conduct your illegal drugs racket inside, no matter how tempting it is, no matter how lenient your jailers are (they are recidivist coup plotters themselves), and no matter how rampant the susceptibility to temptation of prison officials.
If you insist on doing drugs, try not to be obvious. Surely, your “good conduct” won’t go unnoticed. You will be released sooner than you think, after complying with tedious paperwork and payment of some customary “fees.”
Hey, freedom has a price. In the Philippines and anywhere else.
