Vice presidential aspirant and Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday called on members of the Senate and House of Representatives to expedite the passage into law of the measure that seeks a separate facility for prisoners convicted of heinous crimes.
Sotto said Senate Bill No. 1055, or the proposed “Separate Facility for Heinous Crimes Inmates Act” is now pending before the bicameral conference committee. The bill primarily seeks to create a national penitentiary housing criminals convicted of heinous crimes. The bill also seeks to regionalize major prison facilities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
“We have already passed it. The House has also passed it, and they adopted our version of the bill. It’s now with the bicam. We’ll just follow it up with the Committee on Justice so they can finish the bicam,” Sotto said in an online interview with reporters.
Sotto, who is seeking the vice presidency in the upcoming May 2022 elections, said the recent prison break at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP), where four inmates have reportedly escaped, bolsters the need to fast track the passage of the bill into law.
“There have been studies already since before. And I have submitted this to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and to the Executive Department since a long, long time ago.
“When inmates are no longer being visited by their families, they start to go amuck and join gangs,” Sotto pointed out.
Sotto noted that the first three inmates who bolted out of the NBP last Monday were from Surigao del Sur and other provinces and were involved in cases ranging from murder, double murder, homicide, attempted homicide, robbery and also illegal drugs. Two of the inmates have already died after an encounter with the police that went on a massive manhunt operation, but the third is still at-large. The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) today, Tuesday, reported that a fourth inmate who was convicted of robbery and homicide, has also possibly escaped the NBP.
“So how can their family visit them in Muntinlupa? They can’t visit even for once a month or once a year. That’s why we need to regionalize the NBP and separate the heinous criminals,” the Senate leader stressed.
Sotto cited that an area in Laur, Nueva Ecija, near the government’s rehabilitation center can be turned into a regional national penitentiary; a vast area near a Philippine National Police (PNP) camp in Capiz in the Visayas is also being eyed as a potential NBP; and the Davao Penal Colony in Mindanao would also be ideal once the facility is expanded a bit.
An uninhabited island in Palawan, the senator said, is also being offered as a potential site of an Alcatraz-type of facility for PDLs convicted of heinous crimes.
“That’s why this (bill) is almost ready (for implementation),” the senator said.
“Because if we create this separate facility that I have envisioned for a long time already, that (prison break) will not happen. They cannot escape from that place. No cellsite, no signal, no, nothing. (Just) A separate island for them,” he pointed out.
Once enacted into law, Sotto said the hundreds of hectares currently being occupied by the NBP can now be utilized by the people and the government.
“That area costs about a trillion. That can be converted into a university belt. Imagine the growth corridor that we would be creating instead of housing the inmates there?” he pointed out.