The “War on Drugs” in Philippine Criminal Courts: Legal Professionals’ Moral Discourse and Plea Bargaining in Drug-Related Cases

Abstract

The “War on Drugs” in the Philippines resulted in the arrest of unprecedented number of suspects of drug-related crimes. Legal professionals managed this deluge of cases by embracing the device of plea bargaining, previously banned from those types of cases. Given the weakness of the legal cases of drug-related offences assembled by the police, conviction of the accused is often in serious tension with the duty and commitment of legal professionals to decide cases on the basis of law and evidence. At the same time, acquittals appear anathema both to the government’s aggressive anti-drugs campaign and legal professionals’ own moral judgement of drug users. Plea bargaining allows legal professionals to avoid these unwanted outcomes and satisfies their belief in rehabilitation. This chapter draws from interviews with prosecutors, public attorneys, and judges to explore their moral discourse against poor defendants and how it affects the justice system’s response to drugs cases. Locating the “war on drugs” within an understanding of neoliberalism as the ascendance of “markets-and-morals”, the chapter shows how legal professionals’ embrace of plea bargaining continues the weaponization of morality against the poor within the criminal justice system.