The House of Representatives justice committee has batted for the measure overhauling the country's 85-year old Revised Penal Code, renaming penalties, adjusting fines, requiring joint civil and criminal proceedings, introducing community service, and lowering the minimum age of criminal liability to 12 years.
In a statement, committee chair Rep. Reynaldo Umali sought the speedy passage of House Bill No. 6204, which seeks to replace Book 1, or the first 113 articles of the 367-article RPC. Book 1 was trimmed to just 78 articles.
Umali was quoted in the statement as saying that legal complications and difficulty have arisen from the passage of special penal laws in the past eight decades.
"Now we can hardly keep track of the exact number of penal laws that we have and there is difficulty in determining which law or laws are to be used to prosecute a particular criminal conduct," Umali added.
Book 1 covers the "general principles on the application of this Code, the offenses, the persons liable and the table of penalties." The proposed replacement of the RPC would be named "the Philippine Code of Crimes."
The bill had been prepared for the past 3 years by the Institute of Government and Law Reform of the University of the Philippines Law Center, which constituted an 8-member Code of Crimes Committee that included Umali.
Asked if the provisions recommended by the UP Law Center committee would still be changed by the House justice committee, Umali said in a phone interview: "Of course, it can. That will depend on the committee."
Age of criminal liability
Among the likely controversial provisions of the proposed code is the lowering of the minimum age of criminal liability to "12 years of age or below" or "above 12 years of age and under 15 acting without discernment."
This changes the threshold of 15 years old (or 15 to 18 years for those acting without discernment) as set under Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, which raised the minimum age of criminal responsibility from the original age of 9 fixed by the RPC in 1932.
Another change is the Code's proposal to let convicts render community services in case of failure to pay fines - instead of the current subsidiary imprisonment at a rate of 1 day for every 8 pesos of unpaid fine.
This ranges from 4 to 6 months for grave crimes, 1 to 4 months for less grave crimes, and a maximum of 30 days for light crimes.
The RPC provision for the court to consider "the wealth or means of the culprit" in imposing fines, however, was deleted because it violated the equal protection clause.
No 'prescription of penalties'
The proposed Code would also do away with the prescription of penalties, the limitation within which the penalty can be imposed when the convict escapes the service of his sentence.
It would also require civil liabilities to be tried simultaneously and jointly with the criminal proceedings against a defendant. If the civil action is instituted first, it would have to be transferred to the court where the criminal case is subsequently filed.
"The filing of the criminal action shall carry with it the filing of civil action, and no right to reserve the filing of such civil action separately from the criminal action shall be allowed," the bill read.
Renamed penalties
The proposed Code of Crimes also replaced the terminologies, starting with the use of the word "crime" in place of "felony."
Capital punishment is referred to as "punitive penalties" with "punitive 1" referring to the death penalty, and "punitive 2" to imprisonment of 20 years and 1 day to 40 years.
The proposed afflictive penalties are "afflictive 1" (12 years and 1 day to 20 years, or the current prison temporal), and "afflictive 2 and temporary disqualification" (6 years and 1 day to 12 years, or the current prision mayor).
The current penalty of prision correccional (6 months and 1 day to 6 years) would be split into 2 penalties of "corrective 1 and suspension" (3 years and 1 day to 6 years) and "corrective 2" (6 months and 1 day to 3 years).
What are currently called light penalties will be renamed "restorative penalties." These include "restorative 1" (1 month and 1 day to 6 months), which is equivalent to arresto mayor, currently a corrective penalty.
"Restorative 2" (1 to 30 days) is equivalent to the current penalty of arresto menor.
The proposed code would also introduce the penalties of "community service" of 1 day to 6 months, and "restrictive penalty" of 6 months to 2 years.
Updated outline of crimes
Umali could not say yet if Book 2 of the RPC, which lists down the crimes and their corresponding penalties, would be passed together with Book 1 under one House bill.
He said the committee "hopes to complete" its work on the crimes and penalties that may be covered by the overhauled Code of Crimes by March next year.
The Code of Crimes Committee was also composed by Court of Appeals Associate Justice Mario Lopez, Special Prosecutor Edilberto Sandoval, former Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio, former Sandiganbayan Justice Rodolfo Palattao, former UP College of Law Dean Bartolome Carale, UP Vice-President for Legal Affairs Hector Danny Uy, and Reps. Umali and Ramon Rocamora.
The 22-page House bill, meanwhile, was authored by Umali, Rocamora, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Majority Floor Leader Rodolfo Farinas, and Rep. Marlyn Primicias-Agabas.
Source: newsinfo.inquirer.net, Sept. 6, 2017
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