TECHNOLOGICAL innovations such as videoconferencing platforms allowed our judicial systems to function in the early weeks of the pandemic when the national judiciary was brought to a standstill by the national government's quarantine impositions to curb the rapidly spreading coronavirus. Such digital transformation to close the justice gap is also referred to as e-Justice. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) defines e-justice as an umbrella term that captures any effort to administer, deliver, strengthen or monitor justice services using digital technologies. One of the digital technologies used by the Supreme Court in the past three years is Microsoft 365's Microsoft Teams. Through Administrative Circular 37-2020, the Supreme Court directed all litigants, judges and court personnel of 925 first and second level courts nationwide to start virtual court hearings using Microsoft Teams platform. Toward the end of 2020, 170,000 virtual hearings had been held across over 2,000 courts. As a result, 90,000 persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) and children in conflict with the law were released.
As of Jan. 4, 2023, over 1.2 million virtual hearings have been conducted with a success rate of 89.51 percent. Over 138,000 PDLs were successfully processed, of which 2,228 were children in conflict with the law. They should sustain or further improve on this development. A report by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) in 2021 cited that the Philippines has the second-longest period to resolve cases among the 10 member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, according to the 2020 Ease of Doing Business Report by the World Bank and the International Finance Corp. The report added that Filipinos detained without bail for crimes they did not commit, rot in jail with trials lasting up to 15 years as cases move slowly from the lower courts to the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Other than speed, digital transformation improves access to the justice system.
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