“Who is responsible should a child become wayward?”
The question was raised by a nongovernment organization (NGO) that expressed concern over the approval on second reading of the bill lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 12 years old.
Lawyer Noemi Abarientos, Children's NGO Network (CNN) president, lamented that the government might just be looking for an excuse to apprehend children allegedly used as crime scapegoats, especially those involving illegal drugs.
She said that while the children would serve penalties imposed upon them, the masterminds, who would be of legal age, would be left to go on with their lives freely.
The House of Representatives has approved on second reading the bill that seeks to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility, shortly after the measure was amended to align with the Senate version.
Both the Senate and House versions now propose that the minimum age of criminal responsibility be lowered to 12 years old.
The measure seeks to amend Republic Act (RA) 9344, or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, which provides that lawbreakers aged 15 and below are exempted from imprisonment or other punishment.
Under the amended measure at the House of Representatives, a child 12 years old and above at the time of the commission of the offense will be exempted from liability and be subjected to an intervention program, unless the child has acted with discernment.
Abarientos said they saw no reason for Congress to lower the criminal age of responsibility, adding the move only showed that the current administration was blaming children rather than on adults who used them to commit crimes.
“They are actually diverting the issue. Instead of performing their function in arresting and prosecuting criminal elements that use kids, they are placing the blame on the kids. Children are just being children,” she said.
She said police officers and social workers would often argue on who would get custody of children they apprehended.
Social workers sometimes would no longer accept the apprehended child especially after 5 p.m., or after government office hours.
But police officers said that based on their policies, social workers should keep custody of the apprehended minor.
Abarientos said that congressmen who supported the move to lower the criminal age of responsibility were playing with children's lives.
“It’s just a numbers game for them. It’s just a game for them. For us, they are not after the rights of the child,” she said.
Even pediatricians and child mental health experts said children, at that age, needed acceptance and to be placed in a loving and nurturing environment.
Abarientos said parents should also play a vital role in preventing their children from getting involved in criminal activities.
For her, the national government failed to provide the proper care and facilities needed for children in conflict with the law (CICL).
In an ABS-CBN News report, Commission on Human Rights Commissioner Leah Tanodra-Armamento said there were only 58 Bahay Pag-asa facilities for CICL out of the 114 required by the law.
The same sentiment was shared by Abarientos, adding that labeling children as criminals at such a young age would be unjust.
“Not all local government units (LGUs) have an Operation Second Chance Center (OSCC) like Cebu City. Not all municipalities have a facility where arrested children can be placed,” Abarientos said in Cebuano.
The OSCC was established in 2002, or before the enactment of RA 9344.
The center was built to prevent minor offenders, who were then detained with hardened criminals at the city jail, from becoming full-fledged criminals.
As the first of its kind center in Cebu, CICL, even those from other cities and towns, are usually referred by the court to the Cebu City Government-operated facility for minors in Barangay Kalunasan since there is no other facility that can accommodate them.
But due to congestion and lack of manpower and resources, Mayor Tomas Osmeña announced that the OSCC would no longer accept minor offenders from other LGUs, starting in January 2017.
Before Osmeña made the pronouncement, the cities of Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Talisay, Carcar and Toledo as well as the towns of Consolacion, Minglanilla, Barili, San Remigio, Badian, Alcantara, Liloan and Cordova used to send their minor offenders to the OSCC.
But after 10 years of serving CICL from other LGUs, Osmeña said it was time to prioritize children from Cebu City since half of the facility's occupants at that time were not from the city. The OSCC was designed to only accommodate 200 minors.
Section 50 of RA 9344 mandates that “expenses for the care and maintenance of a child in conflict with the law under institutional care shall be borm” by the LGU he or she is based in.
Abarientos said children with no full social accountability, such as signing their own complaint-affidavits, should not be held responsible as “adults in the commission of offenses.”
“The move to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility wants accountability from more, younger children, completely disregarding the factors that make them vulnerable to the commission of offenses. This move is therefore misguided and hypocritical, shifting the blame on children in the guise of caring for them, while hiding the fact that it is the adults who make these children delinquent,” she said.
Members of the CNN, the Children's Legal Bureau Inc. (CLB), Akbayan Cebu and the Cebu Action Group on Friday, Jan. 25, marched from the Fuente Osmeña Circle to the grounds of the Provincial Capitol to protest against the measure.
Abarientos said that if the move to lower the minimum age of criminal liability became a law, it might result to a surge in cases.
The problem, though, was that provisions of the bill did not include the addition of more judges.
Abarientos said that while many Filipino children were born into poverty, they only copied the “decadent values” taught by adults around them.
“We do not subscribe to the idea that children nowadays are different, more intelligent, more mature, more cunning. We do believe that modern times expose children to more information and external influences, making them sound like they can make the best decisions. But these information and influences are not necessarily good. As House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is pointing to the President in making this oppressive law, we then appeal to and challenge President Rodrigo Duterte to change directions and instead make policies that create an enabling environment for child protection. Putting younger children in jail is oppressive and anti-children,” she said.
The CLB also called the move “regressive and oppressive.”
Lawyer Joan Dymphna Amit, CLB executive director, said lawmakers had ignored how maintaining a reform facility was draining to the budget and that it was best to have community-based approaches to child formation and reformation.
“They are deaf to the call that what is needed now is for children to go back to responsible families fully capable of providing for, guiding and disciplining them. They consciously overlook the fact that JJWA (Juvenile Justice Welfare Act) has not been implemented properly by those who are expected to know the law,” she said. (Jolissa Mae Taboada, USJ-R Intern)