SC to Amend Detention Rules to Ease Jail Congestion

THE SUPREME COURT (SC) is amending its rules on detention and release to allow options such as house arrest, medical confinement and community-supervised release as part of a broader justice-sector response to jail congestion, Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo said on Monday. The rule changes will also include compassionate release for offenders who are old, sick, or otherwise entitled to compassionate or humanitarian release upon serving the minimum term imposed, Mr. Gesmundo said at the Justice Sector Coordinating Council (JSCC) Summit. The JSCC brings together the SC, Department of Justice (DoJ) and Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) to coordinate their respective roles in the administration of justice, Mr. Gesmundo said, stressing that institutions can retain their distinct mandates while working at the points where their responsibilities meet. He said the response to jail congestion gained urgency after the First National Jail Decongestion Summit in December 2023, when justice institutions recognized that overcrowding could not be addressed by the correctional system alone. Mr. Gesmundo said the causes of congestion can arise at different points in the justice process, including investigation and prosecution, case resolution, detention, record-keeping, and the implementation of release decisions. The DoJ has undertaken reforms in evaluating and filing criminal cases, while the DILG, through the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, has strengthened paralegal and case-monitoring work, he said. “Through this tripartite synchronization, we have reduced the national jail congestion rate by double-digit percentages,” Mr. Gesmundo said, without specifying the percentage reduction. He said the response requires justice institutions to coordinate while retaining their separate mandates. “The challenge is not to dissolve the boundaries between institutions, but to understand the points where those boundaries meet,” he said. In her opening remarks, Associate Justice Maria Filomena D. Singh, chairperson of the JSCC Technical Working Group on Processes and Capacity Building, said the Justice Zones show how this coordination can operate at the local level. These bring together courts, prosecutors, law enforcers and other justice-sector partners to address local justice problems and improve the delivery of justice services. Five years ago, there were seven Justice Zones nationwide. There are now 20, with 13 new zones established during the period, she said. The 2025 Governance in Justice assessment found that 97% of stakeholders surveyed rated the Justice Zone model as good or excellent, while 85% said the zones meaningfully contributed to resolving justice issues in their localities. Some 66% reported reductions in case backlogs, while 61% reported improvements in jail decongestion, Ms. Singh said. She cited the Naga City Justice Zone, where the jail congestion rate had fallen from 300% more than four years ago to 50%, and the Balanga City Justice Zone, where processing time for parole and probation applications declined from around 200 days in 2021 to 60 days. Mr. Gesmundo also pointed to Justice Zones focused on specific concerns, including the Green Justice Zone in Puerto Princesa for environmental cases and specialty zones dealing with trafficking and online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The justice sector is also pursuing greater interoperability among its information systems through the National Justice Information System, e-Warrant and e-Subpoena systems and the groundwork for a Single Carpeta System. Mr. Gesmundo said these projects are intended to make information more reliable and accessible across institutions, reduce unnecessary delays and enable decisions affecting people’s rights and liberty to be made on the basis of available and dependable information. “A person’s liberty should not depend upon a misplaced document, an inconsistent entry, or information that has failed to move from one institution to another,” he said. Ms. Singh said the JSCC had also convened a second National Decongestion Summit to build on the commitments made in 2023 through longer-term structural, policy and legislative reforms aimed at sustainably reducing jail and prison congestion. She said the JSCC had completed a manual and protocol for handling cases involving women in conflict with the law, while the SC en banc had approved victim-sensitive guidelines for initial rollout in all Justice Zones. “The justice system cannot be strengthened simply by making each institution more efficient within its own sphere,” Mr. Gesmundo said. “It must also be strengthened in the transitions, exchanges, and relationships through which one institution’s work becomes the foundation for another’s.” Mr. Gesmundo, who is set to mandatorily retire on Nov. 6, said justice institutions can remain within their constitutional boundaries while coordinating where their responsibilities intersect. — Mark Joseph M. Sanchez