Short answer. The difference is gravity. Article 25 of the Revised Penal Code grades principal penalties into classes: afflictive (reclusion perpetua down to prision mayor), correctional (prision correccional, arresto mayor, suspension, destierro) and light (arresto menor and public censure). Fine and bond to keep the peace are common to all three classes.
What the law says
Afflictive penalties: Reclusion perpetua, Reclusion temporal, Perpetual or temporary absolute disqualification, Perpetual or temporary special disqualification, Prision mayor.
Revised Penal Code, Article 25 — Scale Of Penalties. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Correctional penalties: Prision correccional, Arresto mayor, Suspension, Destierro. Light penalties: Arresto menor, Public censure.
Revised Penal Code, Article 25 — Scale Of Penalties. Read the full provision →
The scale in Article 25
Article 25 arranges the principal penalties in a descending scale. The heaviest class is the afflictive penalties: reclusion perpetua, reclusion temporal, perpetual or temporary absolute disqualification, perpetual or temporary special disqualification, prision mayor. Below them sit the correctional penalties — prision correccional, arresto mayor, suspension, destierro — and at the bottom the light penalties, arresto menor and public censure. Fine and bond to keep the peace belong to no single class: the article lists them as penalties common to the three.
Why the classification matters
The three-tier grading is not decorative — it is the skeleton the rest of the Code hangs on. Elsewhere in the Code, the class of the penalty attached to a felony determines how serious the felony itself is treated as being, how long the penalty runs, how quickly the offence and the penalty prescribe, and which accessory consequences follow a conviction. When lawyers ask what penalty a charge carries, part of what they are asking is which of these classes it falls in, because that single fact cascades through prescription, accessory penalties and the practical weight of the case.
One entry on the scale is no longer imposable: death
Article 25 opens its scale with capital punishment — death. That entry must now be read subject to later law: Republic Act No. 9346 (2006) prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in the Philippines. In its place the courts impose reclusion perpetua where the Revised Penal Code's nomenclature applies, or life imprisonment where it does not. The article's text still prints the old scale, and this page quotes it as written, but no Philippine court may impose death today.
Principal versus accessory penalties
The scale also separates principal penalties — those a court imposes directly for the offence — from accessory penalties, which attach as consequences of the principal one. The accessory list includes perpetual or temporary absolute and special disqualification, suspension from public office and from the right to vote and be voted for, civil interdiction, indemnification, forfeiture of the instruments and proceeds of the offense, and payment of costs. If you are reading a judgment, both layers matter: the years of imprisonment are only part of what a conviction carries.