20 years for stealing P251? Penal Code overhaul starts

MANILA, Philippines - If you are convicted of robbery in a public building or church involving P251, you can spend up to 20 years behind bars.

The penalty could have been reasonable in the light of the peso’s value 85 years ago when the Revised Penal Code (RPC) was drawn up, but today it is an injustice and the punishment no longer fits the crime, according to senators. And yet those convicted of such petty thefts contribute to overcrowding in national prisons and local jails.

Senators are now moving to rewrite outdated provisions in the RPC – a move expected to benefit mostly poor persons subjected to what is deemed cruel and unusual punishment.

The Senate committee on constitutional amendments, revisions of codes and laws conducted its first and only public hearing on the proposed amendments to the RPC yesterday, the report of which would be presented in plenary within the month.

“Even the finest pieces of legislation are rendered obsolete by the passage of time. In this case, 80 years. Today, beyond obsolescence, the RPC may even be attacked as inflicting cruel, degrading or inhuman punishment, which is, as we all know, in violation of our Bill of Rights, Section 19, Article 3 of our Constitution,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Franklin Drilon, head of the committee.

“For is it not clearly cruel, degrading and inhuman to imprison for 12 years and 1 day to 20 years one who is found guilty of robbery in a public building, such as the Senate, or a church, where the value of the property is only P251. Isn’t that cruel?” he added.

Drilon also said that due to the outdated provisions of the RPC, a significant number of people in prison were convicted of petty crimes or property-related crimes such as theft.

The Public Attorney’s Office noted that most of the cases it is handling involve these types of crimes, specifically household helpers caught stealing from their employers.

Drilon said that qualified theft by a household helper who stole an item worth over P250 would already merit the penalty of reclusion temporal, with imprisonment ranging from 12 years and 1 day to 17 years and 4 months, because of the values in the RPC that were defined in 1932.

Former Supreme Court justice Roberto Abad, who was at yesterday’s hearing as a resource person, said that the proposed amendments in the RPC would bring about fairness and justice because a lot of people sent to jail and suffered the most were those convicted of qualified theft.

Drilon said that even the Supreme Court, in the case of Lito Corpuz vs People of the Philippines, took notice of this injustice brought about by the range of penalties that the courts continue to impose on crimes against property committed today, based on the value of money in 1932.

In the case, Corpuz was found guilty of estafa for failing to remit the proceeds of the sale of P98,000 worth of jewelry and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

While the Supreme Court recognizes the need to revise the values in the RPC and the injustices brought about by these outdated figures, it has refused to indulge in judicial legislation and would rather have Congress do its job of amending the law.

“We hope that this piece of legislation would be treated with urgency and passed expeditiously. We truly believe that the threat of injustice created by an outdated instrument of justice is real, and thus requires immediate legislative action,” Drilon said.

He pointed out that the application of the proposed amendments, if enacted into law, would be retroactive.

“As stated by the Public Attorney’s Office, it will benefit about 50,000 prisoners today who may have been unjustly convicted, or are serving sentence for a long period of time because the values were not adjusted,” Drilon said.