DOJ gears up to solve 330% congestion in all BuCor’s prison facilities nationwide

Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin C. Remulla said the Department of Justice (DOJ) is doing everything to resolve the 330 percent congestion in the prison facilities of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) nationwide.

During the joint press conference of the DOJ and the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) on Thursday, July 21, Remulla said he has met with officials to speed up the release of qualified persons deprived of liberty (PDLs).

He said he met last Wednesday, July 20, officials of both the Board of Pardons and Parole (BPP) and the Parole and Probation Administration (PPA) to see what can be done to speed up the releasing of inmates.

“Sila talaga ang pwede mag-release ng maraming tao (They have the ability to release more people),” he explained.

But he said: “We still need more manpower to do it so that we can process the persons deprived of liberty faster.”

Thus, he said, he met with Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) Chief Persida V. Rueda-Acosta on the possibility of helping out the BPP and the PPA.

Also, Remulla said that BuCor is also fast tracking the digitization of a single system for the carpetas or prison records of PDLs.

“We are pushing for that double time,” he said.

He lamented that carpetas remain to be written manually and have yet to be fully digitized and made available online for government agencies in need of the prison records.

“It’s a new way of doing things, make everything more visible for the BPP and PPA. Mas marami talagang mapa process (More carpetas can be processed for release),” he said.

He said he has recommended to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. a person to be appointed as DOJ assistant secretary for digital infrastructure.

He explained that the digital infrastructure undersecretary “will check everything for the DOJ family para mas maging efficient ang information na aming pino-process (so that the processing of information will be more efficient) for all from prosecution to correction.”