Short answer. Detention by a police officer becomes arbitrary detention the moment the officer holds a person without legal grounds. The Revised Penal Code treats it as a crime committed by the officer himself, and the penalty rises steeply the longer the person is kept locked up.
What the law says
Any public officer or employee who, without legal grounds, detains a person
Revised Penal Code, Article 124 — Arbitrary Detention By Officers. Read the full provision →
What the law says
The commission of a crime, or violent insanity or any other ailment requiring the compulsory confinement of the patient in a hospital, shall be considered legal grounds for the detention of any person.
Revised Penal Code, Article 124 — Arbitrary Detention By Officers. Read the full provision →
Who can commit it, and what makes it a crime
Article 124 of the Revised Penal Code is aimed at people in authority. The offender must be a public officer or employee who has the power to arrest or detain — a police officer, a jail officer, a barangay official acting in that capacity. A private person who locks somebody up is answering for illegal detention under a different article instead.
The act punished is detaining a person without legal grounds. There is no requirement of cruelty, no requirement of a formal cell. Being kept in a station and not allowed to leave is detention. The crime is complete once the deprivation of liberty happens with no lawful basis behind it.
What counts as legal grounds
The article itself names them: the commission of a crime, or violent insanity or any other ailment requiring compulsory confinement of the patient in a hospital. In everyday policing, the first is what matters — an arrest made under a valid warrant, or a warrantless arrest in the situations the rules on criminal procedure allow, rests on legal grounds.
This is why so many complaints turn on the facts at the moment of arrest, not on what turned up afterwards. Grounds that only appeared later do not retroactively make an earlier detention lawful. Equally, an arrest that was properly grounded does not become arbitrary detention merely because the case is eventually dismissed.
The clock decides the penalty
Article 124 grades the offence purely by how long the person was held. Not more than three days draws arresto mayor in its maximum period to prisión correccional in its minimum period. More than three but not more than fifteen days raises it to prisión correccional in its medium and maximum periods. More than fifteen days but not more than six months draws prisión mayor, and beyond six months, reclusión temporal.
So the length of the detention is the single most important fact to record. Note the hour you were taken, the hour you were released, and every place you were held in between.
A different crime from holding someone too long
Do not confuse arbitrary detention with the separate offence of failing to deliver a lawfully arrested person to the judicial authorities within the periods the Code fixes. In arbitrary detention the arrest had no basis at all. In delay in delivery the arrest was valid but the officer sat on it. Both are in the same chapter, and complaints often plead the facts of one when the other fits better.
If this happened to you, gather blotter entries, medical certificates, custody records and witness names quickly — these are the documents that fix the timeline. A complaint may be filed criminally and administratively, and a civil claim for damages can run alongside. Have a lawyer look at the sequence of events before you decide which route to take.