Cambodia Shows Us the Way: Addressing Prolonged Trial Detention

In Cambodia, the law is disarmingly simple. Serious criminal cases must be decided within eighteen months. Non-serious ones, within six. When those time limits are breached, the accused—if detained—walks free. Automatically. Provisionally. No petitions. No begging for mercy. The trial continues, yes, but liberty is restored until conviction. And if conviction comes, the sentence is imposed, with the time already spent in jail credited.

It is an elegant system, neat in its fairness. Punishment is exacted only after guilt is established, never before. The accused need not languish endlessly in purgatory while lawyers shuffle papers and drag their feet.

Why can we not do the same in the Philippines?

We trot out the usual alibis. That the accused will abscond and elude justice. That violent offenders will be treated with kid gloves. That the public demands instant punishment—guilt or no guilt. These fears are exaggerated. In truth, the real reason is not fear of flight. It is that our system thrives on pretrial detention. Prolonged incarceration serves its own hidden purposes.

Our jails are proof enough. Overcrowded to breaking point, filled with the unconvicted. Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDLs) awaiting trial make up the vast majority of the population. My research showed this clearly: cells crammed beyond human capacity, people sleeping in shifts, diseases spreading in airless rooms. The congestion is not simply mismanagement—it is policy. It is how the system works. The law is slow by design, and those delays double as punishment. The entire apparatus deliberately stall proceedings, knowing that every day of delay is another day of suffering for the accused. Why bother with conviction, when pretrial detention already exacts the penalty?

And this punishment falls hardest not on the guilty, but on the poor. The rich post bail. The connected make phone calls. The powerful walk free before their first arraignment. It is the poor who rot inside—those too impoverished to hire lawyers, too invisible to matter, too powerless to complain. Their cases stretch for years, their lives wasted away. In many instances, by the time judgment finally comes, they have already served more than the sentence imposed. Justice delayed is not only justice denied; it is justice mocked.

Meanwhile, the cost is staggering. The government spends billions feeding and guarding detainees who have not yet been convicted of any crime. Jail congestion worsens. Violence festers. Guards are stretched thin. Families are drained of resources, forced to pay for food, medicine, and bribes just to keep loved ones alive inside. Pretrial detention is not only cruel—it is expensive, irrational, and corrosive of public trust.

Cambodia has shown there is another way. By enforcing strict timelines, it prevents the weaponization of delay. By mandating provisional release after deadlines lapse, it forces prosecutors, judges, and lawyers to act. By crediting time served, it ensures that punishment is tied to guilt, not to the calendar. And the sky has not fallen. Their system works. Cases proceed, but liberty is respected. No one is made to suffer endlessly for the failures of the state.

What would it take for the Philippines to follow suit? First, legislative reform. Our criminal procedure code must be amended to impose strict time limits, with automatic release provisions when breached. Second, institutional coordination. Courts cannot carry this burden alone. They must work with the Parole and Probation Administration, local governments, even civil society groups, to supervise released defendants. Reporting, check-ins, community programs—there are many ways to ensure attendance without jail bars. Third, training and resources. Supervision must be professional, not perfunctory. Agencies must be equipped to monitor effectively, fairly, and consistently.

Yes, there will be resistance. Politicians will decry it as soft on crime. Prosecutors will bristle at limits to their power. The public, conditioned to equate detention with justice, will demand their pound of flesh. But the truth is simple: our current system does not deliver justice, it delivers vengeance by attrition. It punishes poverty, not crime. It perpetuates congestion, not order.

Cambodia shows us a way out of this madness. The question is whether we have the courage to follow. Until then, our jails will remain what they are today: cemeteries of the presumption of innocence.