Lifelong jail term pushed versus heinous crimes

Buhay Representative Lito Atienza has vowed to push for new legislation that would punish heinous crime convicts with a harsher form of lifelong incarceration, instead of death by hanging as proposed by President-elect Rodrigo Duterte.

“Our alternative is tantamount to locking up a convict and throwing away the key,” said Atienza, who earlier backed Duterte’s aggressive stance against crime but also cautioned against the “reckless” revival of the death penalty.

“Just the same, we categorically maintain that raising the certainty of punishment, as opposed to increasing the severity of the penalty itself, is the strongest deterrence to potential offenders,” Atienza, former three-term mayor of Manila, said in a news release.

“If there was 100 percent assurance of being apprehended and imprisoned for committing a crime, fewer people would do so,” he said.

The lawmaker called for “a total war” on widespread corruption in law enforcement, the prosecution service, the judiciary, and in corrections, saying that a criminal justice system in tiptop condition is the surest way to guarantee arrest and punishment.

Atienza said he would file a bill defining a new mode of life imprisonment for serious offenders, immediately upon the opening of the 17th Congress next month.

Under his proposal, those found guilty of grave crimes would receive a new sentence called “qualified reclusion perpetua,” in lieu of the death penalty, which had been long abandoned by 140 countries, including the Philippines, as a cruel and degrading punishment that violates the sanctity of human life.

“The problem with the death penalty is that it leaves no room for rectification. We cannot bring a dead convict back to life, even if another party later on confesses to having committed the crime for which the convict had been wrongfully condemned,” Atienza said.

He said qualified reclusion perpetua means that a convict would stay in prison for an absolute minimum of 40 years, or until he or she attains the age of 70 years, whichever comes first, before becoming eligible for possible parole.

Convicts drawing the new sentence would effectively spend their natural lives behind bars, with the accessory penalty compelling them to provide full restitution to their victims, or to their victims’ families, Atienza said.

At present, the lawmaker explained that the maximum penalty in the country’s Penal Code is “reclusion perpetua,” or a simple life term, which he said actually means 30 to 40 years in prison, with the convict becoming eligible for possible conditional early release after serving just half of the term, or after 15 to 20 years.

A so-called “life termer” under existing laws is also entitled to good conduct or loyalty allowances, and a reduction of sentence for preventive detention, or for time spent in jail prior to conviction, Atienza said.

“But under our proposal, all these allowances and the benefit of reduced sentence for preventive detention would not apply to convicts sentenced to qualified reclusion perpetua,” he said.

Atienza also wants heinous crime convicts to perform productive labor while in prison, with the earnings derived therefrom placed in a fund to indemnify their victims. For this purpose, he called for the establishment of a new Victim’s Indemnification Fund to be administered by the Department of Justice.