Prisoners’ support group KAPATID on Thursday said filing cases against personnel linked to the missing funds at the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) is not enough, saying that the money belongs to persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) and is intended for food, medicine, and hygiene, and must be immediately returned to them.
KAPATID said the missing money should be treated as the private funds of the PDLs and their families, not government funds, and should be reimbursed even while administrative or judicial proceedings are ongoing.
“Charging seven individuals does not resolve the central questions: Where is the money? When and how will affected persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) get their money back? And who at every level of responsibility should be held accountable?” KAPATID spokesperson Fides Lim said.
“BuCor must immediately return the money of every affected PDL. These are not government funds but the PDLs’ own money and family support for food, medicines and hygiene that BuCor required them to deposit under its mandatory cashless system,” she added.
KAPATID urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Commission on Audit (COA) to take over the investigation into the missing CIW trust funds after the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) reported conflicting amounts of unaccounted money.
BuCor’s Directorate for Intelligence and Investigation reportedly placed the missing funds at P5.15 million, while its Internal Audit Service Unit reported a deficit of P6.4 million, excluding more than P1.2 million in unrecorded receivables.
Lim said the conflicting figures showed why BuCor should not be left to investigate the matter on its own.
“BuCor cannot even establish how much PDL money is missing, so how can it be the sole agency investigating what happened to those missing funds?” she said.
KAPATID also rejected BuCor’s decision to file cases against two dismissed superintendents and five other personnel, saying the move should not end the investigation into the broader issue of accountability.
“Command responsibility requires scrutiny of those who approved and supervised this high-risk policy and the resulting losses. The Bureau of Corrections cannot investigate a failure of its own system and then declare the problem solved by charging those at the bottom,” Lim said.
KAPATID said the mandatory cashless system at the CIW was institutionalized through a 15-year memorandum of agreement signed by BuCor Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. on Dec. 12, 2023.
The group said the agreement was implemented despite a collective petition signed by about 3,000 CIW inmates opposing the system.
Lim said KAPATID had raised the mass petition through the Makabayan bloc during the 2024 congressional budget deliberations, when the DOJ reportedly said the system would be scrapped.
“Yet, the so-called cashless system continued at the CIW,” Lim said.
The group also criticized proposals to increase phone rates for inmates and any move to freeze family remittances, saying PDLs should not bear the consequences of administrative failures.
KAPATID urged the DOJ to use its supervisory authority to ensure an independent investigation, while asking the COA to conduct a full audit of the trust fund.#