Pandemic should prompt reexamination of imprisonment as justice — UP Law report
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 8:54 p.m.) — The COVID-19 pandemic and the adjustments needed for a "new normal" present an opportunity to review and overhaul the country's criminal justice, lawyers with the University of the Philippines College of Law said.
Released Thursday, “Building a Resilient Judicial System” proposes a framework for court procedures while the world deals with the pandemic that has altered how people live and conduct business.
The law professors however noted that the currently enforced lockdown and the potential recurrence of COVID-19 or of a different pandemic "add impetus to the need to overhaul the judicial process."
New technologies may help in short- up to long-term approaches to make the Philippine court system resilient to disasters and pandemics, the law professors said.
The proposal was written by Jay Batongbacal, JJ Disini, Michelle Esquivias, Dante Gatmaytan, Oliver Xavier Reyes and Theodore Te.
Legislative branch
The law professors urged working with Congress to “review penal provisions for minor infractions.”
"The continued insistence on using penal provisions to exact accountability or demonstrate an eagerness to resort to imprisonment for even minor infractions leads to overcrowding of dockets and congestion of jails," they added.
The authors called this an “overload" on the administration of justice that aggravates health risks in times of pandemic and health crisis.
President Rodrigo Duterte was given “special powers” to address the current health crisis through the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act. His justice secretary, Menardo Guevarra, earlier said that violators of ECQ guidelines, also a provision of the Bayanihan law, may be subjected to warrantless arrests.
Labor group Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino reported earlier this week that the San Jose police station in Rodriguez, Rizal—where two of its leaders are being held—is cramped, with most people there detained over quarantine violations.
Guevarra, in April, said the DOJ is studying a proposal for the release of “low-risk offenders,” which refer to “the gravity (or lack of gravity) of the offenses committed or charged, or could refer to the general conduct shown by the person detained.”
DOJ, for its part, relaxed requirements for applications of parole and executive clemency, and reduced the minimum age of executive clemency application to 65 from 70 years old.
These new guidelines, crafted in study for prisoners’ release on humanitarian reasons, from DOJ will only take effect on May 15.
The law professors stressed: “Congress should consider decriminalizing certain offenses and making them ‘civil wrongs,’ with a clear system of exacting accountability through pecuniary rather than penal means.”
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Executive branch
Long-term approaches include “overhauling the trial court system to make it more electronic, cloud-based and more susceptible to participation from a distance.”
Coordination with the executive and legislative branches of government is needed.
They noted that preliminary investigation and inquest proceedings—carried by agents under the Departments of Justice and the Interior and Local Government—are procedures listed under the Rules of Court, but are under agencies of the executive branmnch.
“The conduct of preliminary investigation during this time is one of the processes that need to be streamlined,” they said.
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