Community service for minor offenders urged

MANILA, Philippines  - Instead of sending minor offenders to jail, lawmakers have proposed that these minor offenders be penalized with community service instead.

Lawmakers said the scheme would also decongest  the country’s cramped jails.

HB 3497, a substitute bill to the original HB 639, introduced by Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, and sponsored and defended in plenary by the Committee on Revision of Laws chaired by Rep. Marlyn Primicias-Agabas, is entitled “An Act authorizing the Court to require community service in lieu of imprisonment for the penalty of arresto menor, amending for the purpose Chapter V, Title III, Book One of Act. No.3815, as amended, otherwise known as the Revised Penal Code.”

“The prime objective of this bill is to decongest local jails by authorizing the courts to render a sentence of community service in lieu of imprisonment for offenses punishable by arresto menor (one day to 30 days),” the authors said.

The measure provides that the community service to be rendered shall be under the surveillance of a barangay captain and probation officer.

The proposed penal reform measure contained in HB 3497 had been approved by the House of Representatives in December 2010 and subsequently transmitted to the Senate for its consideration

Besides, Primicias-Agabas, there are seven other major proponents of the measure.

“If the conditions imposed on community service sentence had been violated, the Court shall order the re-arrest and the penalty shall be served in jail,” they said.

The Court, as provided under the measure, shall issue an order that the sentence was served if the service had been completed. The privilege of rendering community service in lieu of service in jail shall be availed of only once.

Aside from the defendant rendering community service in the place where the crime was committed and subjected to rehabilitative counseling, the court shall consider the welfare of the society and the reasonable probability that the person sentenced shall remain at liberty without violating the law.

“Community service shall consist of any actual physical activity which inculcates civic consciousness, and is intended towards the improvement of a public work or promotion of a public service,” the bill states.