Articulating to the Right to the Presumption of Innocence as a Constitutional Imperative for Critical Carceral Reforms/ by Allan Chester B. Nadate

The Duterte administrations' increased emphasis on street-level law enforcement strategies in its so-called "War on Drugs" aggrevates a criminal justice system already burdened by an inordinate number of illegal drugs-base detention and incarceration. The administrative, operational, and institutional stress caused by these intensified prosecutions has, in many ways, led to the deterioration of detention conditions and standards in many facilities; thus, raising important questions as to the protection and preservation of human rights and civil liberties that a person does not include in toto shed upon his or her charge and detention. The depravity of detention conditions has been widely documented by official and independent reports. This note challenges the constitutionality of this practice based on a human rights analysis. In particular, construing the constitutional presumption of innocence together with the reformulated "inhumane treatment" clause militates against the lack of adequate practical differentiation to detainees, making their conditions tantamount to punishment. By looking into the deliberations that led to the pertinent Bill of Rights provisions, as well as parallel or related developments in American constitutional law and international human rights law, this note comprehensively articulates the legal bases for critical carceral reforms that reestablish respect for human dignity and recognize the inherent inviolability of a the human person.