Members of the Philippine National Police (PNP) will be subjected to a thorough retraining on investigation and case build-up courses in a drastic move to address the dismal conviction rate of criminal cases in the country.
Department of Justice Sec. Jesus Crispin Remulla said that based on their data, the conviction rate of criminal cases in the country is below 25 percent and that already include successful plea bargaining agreements.
“This means we are not really getting a passing rate. this is not a standard that we can live with. We have to change this drastically. So we are really looking at how we can improve the justice system so that we can minimize criminality,” said Remulla in a press briefing at Camp Crame on Thursday, July 21.
“What we really need is the certainty of punishment and when the conviction rate is very low then the certainty of punishment goes down, then the criminals have a heyday, an easy time with the law,” he emphasized.
The press briefing was also attended by Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Sec. Benhur Abalos who also presented data that of the more than 220,000 PNP personnel, more than 22,000 of them are classified as police investigators and out of this figure, only 123 of them are law graduates.
Abalos said there is a need to reinforce the investigative capability of the PNP, especially of the hundreds of thousands of cases being filed every year.
He said that from July 1, 2018 to July 15, 2022 alone, almost 300,000 criminal cases relating to illegal drugs were filed in various courts of the country.
Out of the number of cases, a total of 5,551 cases were dismissed at the Office of the Prosecutors level while another 5,753 were already dismissed in court.
“This is where we are going to start. What is important as I have emphasized is not the quantity of cases filed but the quality of cases filed,” said Abalos.
This is the reason, according to Abalos, why they are now coordinating with the DOJ in order to strengthen the partnership to improve the criminal justice system.
Legal buddies
In discussing the pillars of the justice system, Remulla admitted that there is something wrong in the enforcement and prosecution side of the system.
For Remulla, the PNP and prosecutors should be best buddies when it comes to running after criminal elements.
Based on the realities on the ground, the PNP would sometimes blame the prosecutors for failing to appreciate the pieces of evidence they attached in the filing of the cases.
The prosecutors, on the other hand, would blame the police for filing a weak case in explaining why criminal cases filed would end up being referred for further investigation which would result in the release of the arrested suspects.
“It’s the prosecution working with the police that we want to happen so that cases can be filed directly by them and cases can be filed at the very end.”
Remedy
Both Remulla and Abalos are lawyers who graduated in law schools in 1987—Remulla at University of the Philippines while Abalos at the Ateneo de Manila.
Remulla said that before they formally assumed their respective posts, they already had initial discussion in order to improve the criminal justice system.
“Basically we agreed to start retraining our law enforcement units in both remedial and substantive law,” said Remnulla.
He explained that Remedial Law focuses on the level of surveillance, effecting arrest, preserving crime scenes and processing crime scenes and evidence.
“All of these has to be restudied and re-inculcated and of course injected into the system in a more widespread manner meaning every police station should have that skill already from the very start,” Remulla explained.
On the part of the DOJ, Remulla said they are now working together within the agency to address the usual legal obstacles in the successful prosecution of criminal cases.