About 8,000 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs), who are serving jail terms for heinous crimes, will be released soon with the enforcement of the 2024 Revised Implementing Rules and Regulations (RIRR) of Republic Act No. 10592, the Good Conduct Time Allowance Law.
The RIRR allows PDLs who are serving jail sentence for heinous crimes to be credited with GCTA that would shorten their jail terms.
The Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) said that about 8,000 PDLs would benefit from the RIRR.
Officials of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) signed the 2024 RIRR last Friday.
DOJ Undersecretary Raul T. Vasquez said the 2024 RIRR “ushers in a new day in the lives of our persons deprived of liberty.”
Vasquez said the PDLs “should be given a second chance at ‘yun po ang purpose ‘nung ating IRR sa ngayon (and this is the purpose of the IRR).”
He disclosed that the documentation for the 8,000 PDLs has been completed.
“Sana mapabilis natin ito para magkaroon ng pagkakataon mag-Christmas at mag-New Year na ‘yang 8,000 na ‘yan sa kanilang mga pamilya (I hope that the processing will be swift so that the 8,000 PDLs can spend their Christmas and New Year with their families),” he said.
Vasquez explained that the 2024 RIRR replaced the 2019 RIRR in response to last April’s Supreme Court (SC) ruling on the petitions of PDLs at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City that sought that they too should benefit from the GCTA Law.
The SC had ruled that the 2019 RIRR “exceeded its power of subordinate legislation when it excluded persons convicted of heinous crimes from the benefits of Republic Act (RA) No. 10592, or the New Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) law.”