Senate OKs on 2nd reading bill decriminalizing vagrancy

Published March 8, 2011 3:06pm

The Senate has approved on second reading a bill that would strike out vagrancy from the countryâ€™s code of crimes. Senate Bill No. 2367 seeks to repeal provisions of Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code which seeks to punish vagrants and prostitutes with arresto menor (imprisonment from one to 30 days) or a fine not exceeding P200. In case of recidivism, vagrants are punished by arresto mayor in its medium period (imprisonment from two months to four months) to prision correccional in its minimum period (imprisonment from six years to two years and four months) or a fine ranging from P200 to P2,000, or both, depending on the court. But Senator Francis Escudero, who authored the bill, said there was a need to repeal the law because it has become a "common excuse" for law enforcers to detail, arrest, or bring to the police station any person they don't have no sufficient reasons to arrest. "We see it all the time in the news, when authorities round up people and no definite charges can be made,vagrancy comes in handy. Cases of this nature have already piled up in our justice system," he said in his sponsorship speech on Monday. In stressing the importance of his bill, Escudero in Janaury cited the case involving a 30-year-old vendor who claimed she was raped by PO3 Antonio Bautista Jr. inside the headquarters of the Manila Police District following her arrest for supposedly being a vagrant. Bautista has since surrendered and is undergoing investigation for the incident. Vagrants Under Article 202 of the Revised Penal Code, vagrants are defined as:

any person having no apparent means of subsistence, who has the physical ability to work and who neglects to apply himself or herself to some lawful calling;

any person found loitering about public or semi-public buildings or places or trampling or wandering about the country or the streets without visible means of support;

any idle or dissolute person who ledges in houses of ill fame; ruffians or pimps and those who habitually associate with prostitutes; and

any person who, not being included in the provisions of other articles of this Code, shall be found loitering in any inhabited or uninhabited place belonging to another without any lawful or justifiable purpose. If SB 2367 is passed into law, all pending vagrancy cases shall be dismissed and all persons serving sentence for violating the vagrancy law shall immediately be released. Escudero had filed a similar bill during the 14th Congress. The measure was approved by the Senate on third and final reading but was not passed into law. â€” Kimberly Jane Tan/RSJ, GMA News

Tags: vagrancy, francisescudero