I'm Giancarlo Enrico S. Pozon, a Wushu instructor, investor and Barrister... That's right, Barrister; I graduated from law school and took the Bar Exams, now I'm waiting for the results. I created this blog to make Philippine Law easy to understand for the average person. It's all about free legal advice. There are many law blogs. But the problem is that many of them are written for lawyers and law students. They use words that can't be understood by ordinary people.
Many lawyers, judges and law students consider themselves as superior to most human beings because of their knowledge of the law. It bothers me since the law is supposed to serve society. Since the law is meant to serve society as a whole, it is important that is must be understood by everybody.
This does not mean that we should all become lawyers. It means that although law is a highly specialized profession, the first duty of everybody in this profession is to make the law understandable to all; that's why all these articles are free legal advice.
Like I said, this blog is about law -but it's for the ordinary people, not the lawyers. It's for the ordinary folk so they will know what is good and bad for them, and that making them aware of the law will help us all improve society as a whole. This is free legal advice for everybody!
In the Philippine Penal System, there are two (2) kinds of penalties: those provided for in the Revised Penal Code and those mentioned in other laws. Some laws prescribe penalties found in the Revised Penal Code while others provide penalties that are uniquely their own. The Revised Penal Code has two (2) kinds of penalties: divisible and indivisible. Divisible penalties are divided into three (3) periods: minimum, medium and maximum.
The penalties under the Revised Penal Code are:
1.) Death -indivisible, abolished in 2006
2.) Reclusion Perpetua -indivisible, 20 years and 1 day to 40 years
3.) Reclusion Temporal -divisible, min: 12 years & 1 day to 14 years & 8 months, med: 14 years, 8 months & 1 day to 17 years & 4 months, max: 17 years, 4 months & 1 day to 20 years
4.) Prision Mayor -divisible, min: 6 years & 1 day to 8 years, med: 8 years & 1 day to 10 years, max: 10 years & 1 day to 12 years
5.) Prision Correccional and Destierro -divisible, min: 6 months, & 1 day to 2 years & 4 months, med: 2 years, 4 months & 1 day to 4 years & 2 months, max: 4 years, 2 months & 1 day to 6 years
6.) Arresto Mayor -divisible, min: 1 month & 1 day to 2 months, med: 2 months & 1 day to 4 months, max: 4 months & 1 day to 6 months
7.) Arresto Menor -divisible, min: 1 to 10 days, med: 11 to 20 days, max: 21 to 30 days.
The periods of the divisible penalties are further divided into minimum, medium and maximum smaller periods. Destierro is a unique penalty. Instead of being imprisoned, the person punished with destierro is not allowed to come within 25 to 250 kilometers of an area. Fines are also divisible; a light penalty is less than Php 200, a corrective penalty is Php 200 to Php 6,000, and an afflictive penalty is higher than Php 6,000.
Regarding other laws, only those that prescribe Revised Penal Code penalties follow the list above.
3 comments:
this is a very useful article thanks!
With the new RPC,fines are as follows: afflictive is above 1.2M,correctional 40K -1.2M, light less than 40K.
Can you post it here the formula of computing it?
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