The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) has released another batch of persons deprived of liberty (PDL) to further decongest its jail facilities.
This follows a directive from Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla to ease congestion in prisons around the country.
A total of 69 PDLs were released from the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa in five days ending 25 July.
BuCor said the expeditious release of qualified PDLs reduces by 360 percent the congestion in its seven facilities nationwide.
The recent releases included 13 PDLs who had been acquitted of their criminal charges, 31 who had been granted parole, and 25 who had served their jail terms, the bureau said.
Remulla earlier pointed out among measures to ease the burden of so many PDLs was the digitization of prison records, called carpetas, for the faster review of documents of prisoners slated for release.
Apparently, prison records are still encoded manually, resulting in some delays in the review of the record of an inmate.
Remulla said digitizing records under a Single Carpeta System would eventually help decongest the country’s prison facilities by speeding up the release of inmates with good records while in detention and those who have completed their sentences.
In his earlier visit to the offices of the Board of Pardons and Parole and the Parole and Probation Administration in Quezon City, Remulla said he saw BuCor officials manually submitting the inmates’ carpeta.
“If it’s manual, the process is time consuming, and what would now happen to the inmates?” Remulla said in a joint press conference with Interior Secretary Benjamin “Benhur” Abalos Jr. and top officials of the Philippine National Police at Camp Crame last month.
Last 5 July, a total of 99 PDLs were freed from NBP’s medium and minimum-security compounds.