Amending Incremental Penalty Rule on the Crime of Estafa

The basic purpose of criminal law is to prohibit conduct that unjustifiably or inexcusably causes or threatens substantial harm to individuals as well as to society. The Revised Penal Code of the Philippines was enacted as Act No. 3815. It took effect on January 1, 1932. The code distinguishes between serious and minor offenses and assigns the appropriate punishments. With this, it serves as a warning to people of conduct that is subject to criminal punishment and of the severity of that punishment proportionate to the crime. It imposes punishments that satisfy the demands for revenge, rehabilitation and deterrence of future crimes.

Through the years, things have changed. The dilemma confronted by the present code is that it seems it cannot stand the current conditions of the society. For more than 80 years of existence, some people are in question whether the code still serves its purpose, specifically on incremental penalty rule as being applied in the crime of swindling or commonly known as estafa. Article 309 of the Revised Penal Code provides, “any person guilty of theft shall be punished by the penalty of prision mayor in its minimum and medium periods, if the value of the thing stolen is more than 12,000 pesos but does not exceed 22,000 pesos, but if the value of the thing stolen exceeds the latter amount the penalty shall be the maximum period of the one prescribed in this paragraph, and one year for each additional ten thousand pesos, but the total of the penalty which may be imposed shall not exceed twenty years. In such cases, and in connection with the accessory penalties which may be imposed and for the purpose of the other provisions of this Code, the penalty shall be termed prision mayor or reclusion temporal, as the case may be”. Some sectors, including those charged of the crime think that the penalty provided under the Revised Penal Code is now considered as disproportionate and excessively harsh given that the value of money has declined since the 1930s.

The court and the Congress through its continued application of the rule violate to the codes embedded philosophy of proportional retribution. William Blackstone said that “a man cannot suffer more punishment than the law assigns, but he may suffer less”.  The right to liberty is guaranteed by the 1987 Philippine Constitution. Also, it occupies top position in the hierarchy of all civil liberties. If the right to liberty is arbitrarily deprived, all the other rights will be easily disregarded.