PPA to stretch probation qualification of convicts

CEBU, Philippines – The Parole and Probation Administration in Region 7 wants to stretch the qualifications of inmates who can avail of their services.

PPA-7 director Ofelia Quijano said they are adding one day to the maximum sentence requirement for a convict to avail of their services.

Quijano said the additional one day will already mean 500 more clients for them in one year.

According to their policy, only convicts whose sentence does not exceed six years and first time offender could avail of the probation.

Quijano said that there are other proposals to increase the bracket to 12 years which they are opposing because the PPA could not accommodate the number of clients that will be brought by the additional six years.

She said that in Region 7, the number of personnel and volunteers is barely enough to accommodate all the requests.

PPA-7 receives more or less 1,000 new applications a year. They target to resolve more than 4,000 a year with priority to their backlogs.

Quijano said that once the sentence bracket is increased, they expect that government savings will also increase by more or less one third in the region.

Last year, the government was able to save about P34.7 million from the 5,229 cases they were able to resolve.

At P40 per day maintenance cost per inmate, the government could have spent P76.3 million this year. The P76.3 million was deducted by P41.5 million which was the operations cost of PPA-7, thus, the P34.7 million savings.

Of the 5,229 clients they served, 32.84 percent are in the age of 18-30 years old, 27.62 percent are in the age of 31-40 years old and the rest are beyond 40.

Most of them also or 49.7 percent have only attained elementary education, 28.7 percent reached high school while only 12.31 percent reached college. About seven percent did not enter school at all.

PPA provides counseling, skills training, alternative learning, wellness seminars, sports activities, physical training and behavior modification sessions to their clients.

They aim for a permanent regeneration of the client's attitude towards, and capacity for, law observance and right living through the Therapeutic Community.

The office works in partnership with other entities and services in using the most constructive methods in dealing with offenders.

This is consistent with PPA's mission to rehabilitate probationers and parolees and promote their development through innovative interventions and techniques which respect their dignity as humans. (FREEMAN)