Case management and calendar hearing
One of the most intractable problems afflicting the Philippine Criminal Justice System is case delay. It takes an average of 529 days before a case is decided upon by the trial courts (based on my study on five cities in Metro Manila). This case delay eventually leads to prolonged trial detention which translates to jail congestion, additional costs to the government, higher risks of recidivism, and increased threat to public safety.
Thus, there is a need to address this problem. Based on my continuing research, there are three major causes of delay: structural, organizational and cultural. Structural causes include lack of personnel, resources and facilities; organizational causes include lack of coordination, communication and planning among the criminal justice agencies; and cultural causes include attempt to delay proceedings as a technique to win a case. All these lead to inadvertent, unnecessary and purposeful delays.
The Paralegal officers of the BJMP are in the position to monitor the case status of those accused and currently under detention. They are in the position to determine the length of stay of the persons deprived of liberty (PDL) and they identify the areas of case backlog. They can also help integrate the different agencies towards a more coordinated and collaborative arrangements.
To do this, the Paralegal officers must be able to develop a workable mechanism on case management. They should develop a database that captures appropriate information. They should be able to analyze and interpret the data so it can help in the formulation of new programs and policies.
Thus, I developed a training module for jail paralegal officers on how to effectively use the Alpha List, the list of PDLs in the jail facility. The Alpha List contains information, such as date committed to jail, case information and demographic information. In the training module, I share the techniques on how to clean, manipulate, create new variables, and interpret the findings from the data.
I also introduced the calendar hearing database where the Jail paralegal officers can monitor the hearing updates of the PDLs. They can now determine whether hearings are postponed or pushed through, and if postponed, what are the reasons for postponement. If used successfully, the data base can determine what are the usual causes of hearing postponements, who are the court branches most likely to have hearings postponed, and what stages of trial (arraignment, pretrial, trial, promulgation, etc) create the longest backlog.
I do hope that by training our jail paralegal officers, we can address the organizational causes of delay. This can lead to better coordination with the police, courts, prosecutors and defense lawyers. There should be no way that a case will drag for more than 10 years, which happens quite regularly.
I estimate that by introducing this program, we can reduce the length of trial from 529 days to less than a year. Per my estimate, this should translate to a government savings of:
135,000 PDLs times 529 days times Php 70 (food budget) =
PhP 4,999,050,000 (current situation)
Less:
135,000 PDLs times 365 days times Php 70 (food budget) =
PhP 3,449,250,000 (target situation)
Equals:
PhP1,549,800,000
Yes folks, we can reduce the cost by PhP 1.5 Billion Pesos. That money can be reinvested back to the jails to improve facilities, programs and personnel capacities.
And yes, I am doing the training for free!!!!!!!!!!!!
To God be all the Glory!
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