The Philippine National Police has formed tracker teams nationwide to locate and return 1,914 convicts guilty of heinous crimes to the New Bilibid Prison after they were granted early release under the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law.
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PNP chief Oscar Albayalde said tracker teams composed of police from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group will only start hunting the convicts who do not voluntarily surrender during a 15-day grace period.
President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday issued orders to the PNP and the military to help account for the thousands of convicts in the event they refuse to surrender.
Duterte said the authorities will be forced to conduct warrant-less arrests for convicts who do not return voluntarily.
“Following the orders of the President, I have immediately directed all police units nationwide to receive and account for about 1,700 convicts of heinous crimes who were earlier released through Good Conduct Time Allowance,” Albayalde said.
“Those who will heed the order of the President, and opt to surrender are given a 15-day grace period to register and have themselves accounted for in the nearest police stations,” he added.
Albayalde said since the prematurely released convicts were fugitives from justice, they could be arrested without a warrant.
He said he has tasked Metro Manila police chief Guillermo Eleazar to secure a list of the convicts from the Bureau of Corrections.
Earlier, the BuCor put the number of felons who were convicted of heinous crimes but released on good conduct at 1,914.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines through its spokesman Brig. Gen. Edgard Arevalo, said they are ready to render assistance and give support to the Department of Justice, the PNP and other relevant agencies in rounding up the convicts.
“We are committed to ensuring that our communities are safe and that justice is served as this is in pursuit of our constitutional mandate of protecting the people and securing the state,” Arevalo said.
In the wake of a scandal in which convicted rapist and murderer Antonio Sanchez almost walked free, President Duterte sacked BuCor chief Nicanor Faeldon and ordered other officials responsible for the release of prisoners convicted of heinous crimes to report to him and Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra.
Although he will not order their suspension, Duterte said he will have them investigated under the Office of the Ombudsman.
“They will go straight to the Ombudsman. This is a prima facie case. There’s an admission that they were remiss in their duties,” Duterte said.
Duterte also encouraged the heinous crime convicts to surrender to the nearest police or military station within 15 days.
Duterte said the released inmates with heinous crimes will be automatically barred from leaving the country.
In this regard, the DOJ said it would issue an Immigration Lookout Bulletin Order against the convicts.
During the continuation of a Senate inquiry into the implementation of the GCTA Law, Senator Panfilo Lacson asked Guevarra if the department has already issued an ILBO against these former prisoners following President Duterte’s order for them to surrender to authorities within 15 days.
Guevarra said the DOJ will forward the list of high-profile convicts to the Bureau of Immigration so it can be alerted against these individuals in any of the country’s airports and seaports.
A person subject to an ILBO can still leave the country subject to conditions and requirements, including clearance from the Justice department.
An ILBO is different from a court-issued hold departure order since the former only directs the BI to be on the lookout for the subject and to verify the status of a case against the subject person and not to restrict an individual from leaving the country.
Guevarra said the President used two Supreme Court cases as legal bases for ordering the prisoners’ rearrest.
“The basis for rearrest is not a law [statute] but jurisprudence, which forms part of the law of the land,” Guevarra said in a text message to reporters.
He said the two cases are the 1967 case of People vs. Tan and the 2001 case of City Warden of Manila City Jail vs. Raymond S. Estrella et al.
In the Tan case, the Court ruled that it was all right to rearrest a prisoner if his release violated the law.
In the 2001 case, the Supreme Court also ruled that rearresting inmates “can be done without placing them in double jeopardy of being punished for the same offense because their re-incarceration is merely a continuation of the penalties that they had not completely served due to the invalid crediting of good conduct time allowances in their favor.”
Unlike these cases, however, the release of the 1,914 convicts was done upon the orders of several BuCor chiefs from 2013 to the present.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara supported the order of the President to rearrest the prisoners who were released based on “faulty orders.”
Senator Richard Gordon said that since Day 1 of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee hearing on the Good Conduct Time Allowance, he has been calling for the rearrest of the convicts.
Gordon, committee chairperson, said the arrest order would assure the public that the country’s justice and penal system is working.
“This could have been easier if the prison records were fully digitized as mandated by law,” he said. With PNA
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