20-40 YEARS FOR CARNAPPERS - CHIZ

Senator Chiz Escudero is seeking to haul carnappers into prison for forty years to address and abate the series of crimes proliferating the country.

The senator said penal provisions should already be increased as the current law against carnapping proves insufficient, if not inutile in the face of successive carnappings done with great ease and success.

Escudero, chairman of the senate committee on justice and human rights has filed a bill increasing the penalty for carnapping for not less than twenty years to not more than thirty years if the carnapping is committed without violence or intimidation of persons.

When the carnapping is committed by violence against a person, Escudero wants a minimum of thirty years to a maximum of forty years imprisonment.

Escudero has amended the current penal provision of Republic Act no. 6539 which punishes carnapping without violence for a minimum of fourteen to a maximum of seventeen years incarceration, while carnapping committed with violence provides seventeen to 30 years imprisonment.

As such, it falls short of the minimum period for reclusion perpetua, which is at least twenty years and one day, for the requisite to deny bail as a right under the above cited constitutional provision to be present.

"The criminal minds are no longer deterred by our penal code. Under the current law, the accused is entitled to post a bail as a matter of right. The crime has become very lucrative for these carnappers that they can just easily shell out money to post bail and walk scot-free".

The senator explained that once the penalty is increased by making twenty years and one day the minimum penalty imposable for the carnapping, the amended provision thereby now satisfies the period covered by reclusion perpetua.

Escudero said there is a need to strengthen the penal provision for carnapping since it is almost always the first step taken in committing other crimes.

'Logically and naturally, you will not use your own vehicle if you plan to commit a crime. Gun-runners, robbers, drug traffickers have always been found to use a get-away vehicle snatched from other innocent individuals".