MANILA, Philippines - Senate President Franklin Drilon has introduced several amendments to the 85-year-old Revised Penal Code to make it more relevant to the present situation and help address the issue of cruel and excessive punishment being imposed on some individuals.
The proposed amendments of Drilon, a former justice secretary, were contained in Senate Bill 2680, which he filed on Friday.
Drilon said that the law must be amended to help prevent the violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and excessive punishment, particularly for crimes involving amounts which by today’s standards are considered petty.
“The P200 our elders had in their pockets back in the 1930s surely had higher value than the P200 in our wallets today,” Drilon said.
“Even the Supreme Court, in Lito Corpuz vs. People of the Philippines, turned the spotlight on the perceived injustice brought about by the range of penalties that the courts continue to impose on crimes committed today, based on the amount of damage measured by the value of money 80 years ago,” he said.
In the said ruling, the Supreme Court cited the need for “much needed change and updates to archaic laws that were promulgated decades ago when the political, socio-economic and cultural settings were far different from today’s conditions.”
The high court also urged Congress to wield its power in realigning the law with the goals for its passage.
“Eighty years had inevitably dulled the edge of a once sharp measure. The penalties and fines for various crimes under the Revised Penal Code are no longer commensurate to the crime committed,” Drilon said.
“This proposed measure aims to restore the proportionality of the crime to the punishment by revising the amounts set in the various provisions of the Revised Penal Code to their present values,” Drilon said.
For instance, under the present law, a person found guilty of swindling or estafa would face imprisonment of up to 12 years even if the amount involved is only P12,000 to P22,000.
Under the bill, if the amount does not exceed P40,000, the penalty would be imprisonment of only one month to six months.
The bill also raised the fines imposed for various crimes in an attempt to deter criminality in the country.
“The deterring effect of the imposable fines under the current criminal code has diminished through the years due to various factors such as inflation,” Drilon said.
“If we are to curb criminality, we need to enforce tougher but fair, just and reasonable penalties and monetary fines. These can only be done by amending the Revised Penal Code which, since its enactment in 1930, remains virtually unchanged with only piecemeal amendments incorporated through the years,” he said.?
For instance, under the Revised Penal Code, a person found guilty of treason would face imprisonment of 12 to 20 years and a fine of up to P20,000 only.
The bill raises the fine to P4 million.
For conspiracy and proposal to commit coup d’état, rebellion or insurrection, the maximum imposable fine will be increased to P1.6 million from P8,000; for maltreatment of prisoners, it will be P100,000 instead of P500; for unlawful arrest, it will become P100,000 from P500; for indirect assault, the maximum imposable fine will be P100,000 from P500; and for falsification of public documents by private individuals and use of falsified documents, the fine would be P1 million from P5,000.