Short answer. Yes. The Revised Penal Code punishes a public officer or employee who delays carrying out a judicial or executive order for a prisoner's release, or who unduly delays serving notice of that order or the proceedings on a petition for liberation. The penalties are those for arbitrary detention.
What the law says
any public officer or employee who delays for the period of time specified therein the performance of any judicial or executive order for the release of a prisoner or detention prisoner, or unduly delays the service of the notice of such order to said prisoner or the proceedings upon any petition for the liberation of such person
Revised Penal Code, Article 126 — Delaying Release Of A Prisoner. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Any public officer or employee who, without legal grounds, detains a person, shall suffer
Revised Penal Code, Article 124 — Arbitrary Detention By Officers. Read the full provision →
Three distinct ways to commit it
The article does not only punish the officer who keeps the gate shut. It reaches, first, delay in performing a judicial or executive release order; second, undue delay in serving notice of that order on the prisoner; and third, undue delay in the proceedings on any petition for the person's liberation. That second and third limb matter enormously in practice, because detention is very often prolonged not by an outright refusal but by paperwork that sits on a desk. An officer who receives the order and does nothing with it is squarely within the provision, whatever his intention.
The penalty scales with how long the delay lasted
The article borrows its penalties from Art. 124 on arbitrary detention, and that article grades punishment by duration: arresto mayor in its maximum period to prisión correccional in its minimum period where the detention has not exceeded three days; prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods for more than three but not more than fifteen days; prisión mayor for more than fifteen days but not more than six months; and reclusion temporal beyond six months. So the exposure of an officer who sits on a release order for a week is very different from one who sits on it for a year. These are imprisonment terms, not fines, so the peso amounts revised across the Code by Republic Act No. 10951 in 2017 do not change them.
What it does not cover
Not every hour between the signing of an order and a person walking out is criminal delay. The order has to actually reach the officer with custody, and the ordinary processing a release genuinely requires — verifying the order's authenticity, confirming there is no other commitment or pending case holding the person, completing the records — is not "undue" delay. Nor does the article reach a private person; only a public officer or employee can commit it. Where an officer keeps someone in custody with no order at all, the applicable offence is arbitrary detention itself rather than this one.
What a family can do while it is happening
A criminal complaint is a slow answer to a person who is still inside. The immediate remedy is to bring the delay before the court that issued the order and to seek the constitutional writ of habeas corpus, which exists precisely to test the legality of a continuing detention. Keep certified copies of the release order, note the exact date and time it was served and on whom, and get written acknowledgement of receipt at the jail — those documents are what later establish the length of the delay, which is what fixes the penalty. Administrative liability for the officer runs separately from any criminal case. This is general legal information; seek counsel for a specific detention.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 126 — Delaying Release Of A Prisoner
- Revised Penal Code, Article 124 — Arbitrary Detention By Officers