Short answer. Yes. An empty building does not put the taking outside the Code; it moves it to a different article. Robbery in an uninhabited place or in a private building is a distinct offence, and it requires one of the circumstances the article lists, such as breaking in.
What the law says
1. If the entrance has been effected through any opening not intended for entrance or egress. 2. If any wall, roof, floor or outside door or window has been broken. 3. If the entrance has been effected through the use of false keys, picklocks or other similar tools.
Revised Penal Code, Article 302 — Robbery In Uninhabited Or Private Building. Read the full provision →
The building's character changes the article, not the crime
Art. 302 covers robbery committed in an uninhabited place, or in a building other than the inhabited houses, public buildings and places of worship dealt with by Art. 299. So a warehouse, a shuttered shop, an unoccupied structure or a site nobody lives on is not a gap in the Code. It has its own provision, with its own penalties. What the distinction reflects is that breaking into a place where people sleep is treated as graver than breaking into one where nobody is, and not that the second is tolerated.
A listed circumstance has to be present
The article does not reach every taking from such a place. It requires one of the circumstances it enumerates, beginning with these: 1. If the entrance has been effected through any opening not intended for entrance or egress. 2. If any wall, roof, floor or outside door or window has been broken. 3. If the entrance has been effected through the use of false keys, picklocks or other similar tools. The list continues with the breaking of any door, wardrobe, chest or sealed receptacle inside, and with the removal of such a receptacle to be broken open somewhere else.
Where none of those circumstances exists
This is the practical consequence people miss. If nothing was broken, no unusual opening was used and no false key was involved — property was simply taken from an unsecured place — then the elements of this article are not made out, and what happened is likely to be a different offence against property altogether. That is not a technicality to be waved away. It changes the charge, the penalty and what the prosecution must prove, so the presence or absence of a listed circumstance is worth establishing carefully at the outset.
The variables in the penalty, and what to gather
The article grades its penalty by the value of the property taken, and the Code separately raises the penalty a degree where what was taken is mail matter or large cattle. The value thresholds and peso figures throughout the Code were revised by later legislation, so older printings should not be used to estimate exposure. What decides a case is the physical record: photographs of the point of entry before repairs, the damaged lock or door itself, an inventory of what is missing with proof of what it was worth, and any footage, requested at once.
Related provisions
- Revised Penal Code, Article 299 — Robbery In An Inhabited House
- Revised Penal Code, Article 302 — Robbery In Uninhabited Or Private Building