Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra and Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Ano yesterday signed amendments to the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Republic Act (RA) 10592 or the “Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) Law.”
Under the revised guidelines, convicts who committed heinous crimes, recidivists, habitual delinquents and escapees will not be covered by the law.
The revised IRR shall take effect 15 days after its publication.
“To clarify the exclusions, the draft revised IRR enumerates who are disqualified for each type of benefit i.e., credit for preventive imprisonment; good conduct time allowance either during preventive imprisonment or during service of sentence; time allowance for study, teaching and mentoring; and special time allowance for loyalty,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.
“We also defined the meaning of heinous crime. This partakes two sources. One is the listing of heinous crimes appearing in RA 7659 or the ‘Death Penalty Law.’ In that law there is a particular class of offences for which the death penalty is mandatorily imposed, no discretion on the part of the judge. The other source is the jurisprudence,” he added. The revised guidelines depart from the IRR crafted by former Justice secretary Leila de Lima and former Interior secretary Manuel “Mar” Roxas 2nd.
The amended IRR states that while credits and allowances may accrue monthly, the grant of benefits will be made on the second, 10th and 11th year of detention.
If an inmate is disqualified, but had been under preventive imprisonment or has served his sentence prior to the effectivity of RA 10592, lower time allowances under the Revised Penal Code will continue to accrue. But a disqualified prisoner placed under preventive imprisonment or convicted after the effectivity of RA 10592 will not earn any allowance.
The Justice department temporarily stopped the processing of applications for release under the GCTA Law because of the furore that greeted reports that former Calauan, Laguna mayor Antonio Sanchez, who was meted seven life terms for rape and murder, would be among thousands of inmates to be released by the Bureau of Corrections.
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