As one of the five pillars of the criminal justice system, penal institutions in the country are rotten to the core, physically and otherwise. That assertion of fact has been proven true once again with the controversial arrest of convicted killer, former Batangas Governor Antonio Leviste while out of his jail at the New Bilibid Prisons (NBP) in Muntinlupa City. Agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrested Leviste at his LPL building in Makati last Wednesday.
Leviste is serving a 12-year sentence for killing his aide, Rafael de las Alas, in his office at the same building in 2007.
The Court of Appeals upheld Leviste’s conviction for homicide last year. Aside from many other “perks” he obviously enjoys at the NBP, the 71-year-old Leviste is covered by a “living out” privilege for convicted senior citizens and inmates who are nearing completion of their jail term.
Under prison rules, however, living-out inmates must stay within the 536-hectare NBP reservation camp. Inmates enjoying this privilege could also get out of the NBP premises for medical or other personal reasons with prior clearance from the court and the Department of Justice. But when Leviste casually walked out of the NBP that day, he did not secure such required clearances.
Leviste’s caper exposed to the public anew what has been reportedly taking place inside the maximum security walls of the NBP. Rich and influential convicts are lording it over their supposed jailors. Leviste’s fellow NBP inmates like Rolito Go and ex-Calauan Mayor Antonio Sanchez have been reportedly enjoying special privileges from their jailors.
Go was sentenced in 1994 to a maximum of 30 years imprisonment for the killing of Eldon Maguan, an engineering student, during a traffic altercation in San Juan. Like Leviste, Go is also enjoying the “living out” privilege. In his case, Go claimed he is using this privilege so he could undergo medical treatment for his colon cancer. Unlike Leviste, though, Go clarified he secures permit from the DOJ to undergo medical check up. In fact, Go disclosed, he has asked NBP officials to allow him to undergo a check up this Monday.
But Rosario Maguan, the mother of Go’s victim, decried that her son’s killer has been reportedly seen visiting his family in Quezon City on several occasions. The Maguans learned that NBP officials placed Go in the minimum security camp in March 2008. Go has thrice applied for executive clemency since he was brought to the NBP. But the Board of Pardons and Parole (BPP) denied his lawyer’s petition for lack of merit and vehement objections by the Maguan family.
It is to the credit of the Maguan family that Go has remained in prison for keeping vigilant that the ends of justice would not be frustrated. But they could only do so much. Like the rest of us law-abiding citizens, we count on our State authorities running our prison system to keep these criminals spend their time in jail.
Sadly, our country’s penal system obviously has been rotting to the core, not only in terms of physical structures of the jail facilities but also the people running them. In our country, we have a confusing bureaucratic set up of two government agencies in charge of the penal system.
The DOJ, through the Bureau of Corrections, runs the NBP, the Women’s Corrections in Mandaluyong City; and the penal “farms” in Iwahig, Palawan; San Ramon in Zamboanga City; in Sablayan, Mindoro Occidental; Leyte regional prison; and in Panabo, Davao. On the other hand, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), through the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP), supervises the city and provincial jails.
Quite recently, the BJMP came under fire also for the alleged special VIP treatment accorded to road rage killer, Jason Ivler who has been detained at the QC jail while undergoing trial for the murder of Renato Ebarle Jr. Ivler was subsequently transferred to the other BJMP-run Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City. Ivler’s holding party inside his cell and other antics while in jail came out in the open when photos of his activities were seen posted in Facebook.
In the case of Leviste, ABS-CBN’s Current Affairs program XXX tipped off authorities that he is able to go in and out of his cell. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima admitted she gave the order to NBI director Magtanggol Gatdula to conduct this operation and try to catch Leviste in flagrante.
As NBP director, retired Police Gen. Ernesto Diokno has a lot of explaining to do in the case of Leviste. Last Saturday, the investigating panel created by the Justice Secretary verified what has been talked about and known to many but nobody has taken action until De Lima stepped into it.
The funny thing was Diokno’s lame excuse why Leviste has been able to pull his stunt supposedly without his knowledge. Diokno’s alibi was that Leviste is engaged in a “billion trees” project where the latter is supposedly planting trees around his “kubol” or hut located inside the NBP reservation. As a “living out” inmate, Leviste could go around freely in the minimum security area and not locked up inside jail.
This only brings to mind the special privileges also enjoyed by celebrated convicts like former Zamboanga Rep. Romeo Jalosjos and convicted killer Claudio Teehankee Jr. while they were still at NBP. Jalosjos and Teehankee even had air-conditioned “kubol” with color TV and refrigerator which came to public knowledge after they were freed from NBP under executive pardon.
Following Leviste’s attempt to evade serving his jail sentence, reports of other shenanigans inside prison walls are now coming out in the open again. Convicted drug dealers continue to ply their illegal trade even while in prison because their visitors could smuggle in to them cellular or mobile phones to conduct their nefarious business. There are also reports of inmates being clandestinely released from jail as hired assassins. But such reports were just being swept under the rugs.
The penal system is supposed to rehabilitate criminals to make them become better and productive members of society, so that once they are released from prison after they fully served their jail term, they would no longer pose threat to the peace and order situation.
But as it is, our penal system is corrupted from the top. The Philippine jailhouse rots!