(Eagle News)–Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri on Wednesday, Sept. 4, called for the establishment of “Alcatraz-like prisons” for high-risk prisoners.
Zubiri made the pitch for “heinous crime penitentiaries” under his Senate Bill No. 1004, as the Senate blue ribbon and justice committees probed the release of convicts of heinous crimes under the Good Conduct Time Allowance law.
There are now proposals to amend the law for it to explicitly exclude convicts of heinous crimes, following outrage over the reported possible release of former Calauan, Laguna Mayor Antonio Sanchez.
Sanchez was convicted of the murder and rape of Eileen Sarmenta and her friend, Allan Gomez, in the 1990s.
According to Zubiri, heinous crime convicts and high-risk prisoners belong in these “maximum security prisons in isolated and uninhabited islands, far from their victims and society at large.”
He said these inmates, after all, will “claw their way out of prison if given the chance through brute force or influence.”
He said while jails were reformative in nature, they were also supposed to punish criminals by “restricting their liberty, including totally taking away their political rights,” noting the case of Sanchez, who he said was “living luxuriously and enjoying privileges as in a gangland where inmates like him intimidate jail guards as proven by actual videos taken in Bilibid” instead.
” A celebrated crime’s infamous author nearly got total liberty which he does not deserve at all,” he said.
Under his proposal, HCP facilities shall be constructed in regions to be identified by the Secretary of Justice.
The HCPs, Zubiri said, would be run by the Bureau of Corrections.
He said within one year after the new facilities are established, the prisoners serving their sentences in the New Bilibid Prison and other jails of the Bureau of Corrections shall be transferred preferably in solitary confinement.
“The capital outlay budget of the Department of Justice may have to be increased to allocate funds for the construction of maximum security facilities under the (HCP)system,” he said.
“I anticipate the swift passage of this bill and the inclusion of the budget in the 2020 National Government budget,” Zubiri added.
