
Sixty-nine persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) were released from the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa City in five days ending last July 25.
In a statement, BuCor said that the expeditious release of qualified PDLs is being done to reduce the 360 per cent 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, BuCor said.
Just last July 5, a total of 99 PDLs were freed from NBP’s medium and minimum-security compounds.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin C. Remulla had directed BuCor to adopt measures to ease prison congestions.
One of the measures pointed out by Remulla was the digitization of prison records, called carpetas, for faster review of documents of prisoners slated for release. Prison records are still encoded manually.