Justice is not about having more convictions and people going to prison.

Rather, it  is  about  “the finding of the truth,” as  Al  Pacino  famously said.

It takes careful and thorough investigation and prosecution as well as discerning members of the bench to determine whether an accused justly deserves to be convicted and imprisoned.

True, justice delayed is justice denied, but it has also been said that it was better to set a guilty man free than imprison an innocent one.

Time wrongfully served behind bars can no longer be given back to an innocent man or woman. 

That’s why the President’s announcement of his desire to achieve  a higher conviction rate than the 14 percent under the Arroyo administration had achieved sends chills down our spine.

In this sense, President Aquino should stop comparing the performance rates of the country’s prosecution service under his administration to those achieved during the term of his predecessor.            

Saying that higher conviction rate  is part of his judicial reform agenda in the six years that he will be in office, P-Noy said during  the World View interview on YouTube that he has already instructed Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to direct prosecutors to make sure that cases they are pursuing in courts will result in conviction or imprisonment.

“So, under our watch I’ve tasked our secretary of justice to reform that prosecutorial system wherein convictions have to be the primary criteria of having done your job,” he was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

“My oft-repeated admonition to all the sectors that are involved in attaining our judicial reforms is, simply put: None of our efforts will amount to anything if we are not able to convict anybody,” P-Noy stressed. “If anybody can commit any crime with impunity then there is no disincentive to stop from doing so, hence, there has to be that conviction – especially of the principals.”

Such statement is careless as it is dangerous.

When he was still a senator, Aquino said he was surprised to hear that it takes each case at least six years to be adjudicated by the courts – aside from controversial cases that take decades – and that this, he said, should be stopped.

Aquino was told during a Senate budget hearing of the Justice department that the country’s justice system only has a 14-percent conviction rate, which means 86 percent of cases ended in acquittal or dismissal.

“This was the study funded by the World Bank done by our Supreme Court – and the answer was the affirmative (14 percent conviction rate),” he related.

Aquino hinted that prosecutors from the DoJ should make sure that only those cases that will most likely result in conviction should be filed in courts, and not filing anything just for the sake of making indictments.

It’s not a race to the top, stupid!