Corona: Over 3,000 inmates released under Justice on Wheels since 2008

MORE than 3,000 inmates have been released since 2008 under a Supreme Court-initiated project to declog court dockets and decongest jails, Chief Justice Renato C. Corona said on Friday.

Mr. Corona, in his speech during the Philippine Constitution Association’s commemoration of Independence Day, said that as of last April, 3,545 inmates have been released under the Enhanced Justice on Wheels project “either because they were acquitted or they had served the maximum penalty for the crimes they were accused of.”

He noted that 5,606 cases have been successfully mediated; 2,270 individuals have benefited from free legal aid; and 9,056 inmates have received medical and dental attention.

Court Administrator Jose Midas P. Marquez, in a separate interview at the weekend, said figures cited by Mr. Corona went only as far as July 2008 when the project was relaunched. Justice on Wheels began during the term of Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno in 2004.

“It has been relaunched since nothing was happening since it started,” Mr. Marquez said in Filipino, without going into details.

Decongest jails

Mr. Marquez said the project is being implemented nationwide “to decongest jail cells.”

In August last year, jail congestion rate was at 163% in 17 regions, according to the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) data.

Justice on Wheels was adopted from an experiment in Guatemala of “bringing justice to the grassroots.”

The program uses a bus whose interior is divided into two sections: a courtroom and a mediation room.

The roving court is manned by a presiding judge, a clerk of court, a prosecutor, a public lawyer, a court stenographer, docket clerk, process server, driver and a security guard.

The high court recently launched the project in Marikina City where “75 inmates had been released, 130 given medical and dental aid, 50 extended legal assistance, while four out of four cases considered were successfully mediated,” Mr. Corona said.

Meanwhile, data from the BJMP showed only 3,040 inmates have been released from April 2008 to April 2010.

There were a total of 58,460 inmates nationwide as of last April from 61,500 in the same period two years ago.

Inspector Gechris G. Abanilla, staff at the BJMP Directorate for Personnel and Records Management, said the data came from the agency’s 17 regional offices which submit reports to the Directorate for Operations at the central office in Quezon City.

Supreme Court officials were not immediately available for comment on the discrepancy of figures. — PPM