SEN. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, chairman of the Senate Committees on Local Government and Ways and Means, endorsed for plenary approval last week a bill creating 100 positions for” judges-at-large” for Regional Trial Courts and 50 positions for municipal trial courts.
The House of Representatives had earlier approved its version of the bill, which seeks to help solve the problem of court congestion in many parts of the country. The judges-at-large may be detailed by the Supreme Court to any lower court in the country, many of which are now suffering from congestion of cases.
Citing a study by the National Statistical Coordination Board, Senator Angara in his sponsorship speech said the country’s lower courts have an annual average load of 1,059,484 cases. These are supposed to be handled by 37,230 courts but about a third of these – 12,076 – are unfilled. The deployment of regular judges to some of these vacant courts has proved to be unproductive as the judges have to divide their attention between their own salas and the vacant ones, Angara said.
A direct result of the lack of enough judges to decide so many cases is the massive congestion in the country’s jails – a situation the entire world knows by now because of news photos showing prisoners trying to sleep even on stairs for lack of space. The Bureau of Jail Management and Penology’s facilities are supposed to have a holding capacity of 20,653 persons, but they now have to hold 146,302 as of December, 2017. Up to 60 percent of the country’s total jail population are detainees awaiting trial, according to the BJMP.
In a recent interview, Director General Oscar Albayalde of the Philippine National Police cited the need for more police detention facilities, in view of the increase in the number of detainees, especially with the administration’s aggressive campaign against illegal drugs. More jails are clearly needed, he said. He appealed to local mayors to help, citing the Muntinlupa City government which is helping construct a bigger police station with improved police detention facilities.
Jail congestion is only one of the problems in the country’s justice system. The appointment of more judges, including the “judges-at-large” proposed in the Senate and House bills, will help address the over-all problem of slow justice in our country. It is only one of several steps that need to be taken. Senator Angara listed some of these needed steps – constant training and capacity building among the officers and workers of the courts, use of more technology solutions where appropriate, reforms in criminal procedure, and more funding.
After the approval of the bills for the appointment of 150 “judges-at-large,” we hope Congress will turn its attention to these other measures to speed up and improve our courts and boost our people’s confidence and trust in our nation’s system of justice.
