AS a political tactician, House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is fun to watch.
After the House justice committee, save for one congressman, approved last week a bill to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from 15 to nine years old, journalists asked Speaker Arroyo why she had supported it. “Because the President wants it,” Arroyo said. She professed support for the President even as she deflected blame should the law prove to be unpopular or ineffective.
Now, House Bill 8858 is one reading away from the Lower House’s approval. After being reworded, it now sets the minimum age of “social responsibility” at 12, which matches a related bill in the Senate. The House justice committee’s report identifies two lawmakers from Cebu, Gwendolyn “Gwen” Garcia and Gerald Anthony “Samsam” Gullas Jr., among HB 8858’s co-sponsors.
They are not the only ones among Cebu’s political leadership to support a lower MACR. In March 2012, then-congressman Pastor Alcover Jr. filed House Bill 6047, in which he proposed to bring the MACR to nine. Alcover’s view was that “the advent of modern technologies” has made the young “more intelligent compared to their counterparts 15 or 10 years ago.” That is a guess, at best, and not a fact.
But facts have been in short supply in this long and emotional debate on whether children nine years old (or 12) should be held to account for committing crime, and how a society that wants to be humane should go about doing so. Where are the facts on the number of crimes committed by children, relative to their share of the total population? Are there facts to demonstrate that holding children criminally liable is an effective way to curb crime? Crime statistics made available by the Philippine National Police do not break down the numbers according to the suspects’ ages.
A second issue is whether such a change would be just. A MACR of 12 will put us in the same juvenile justice neighborhood as Canada, Denmark, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Saudi Arabia. Yes, as some supporters of the bill have pointed out, even with a minimum age of criminal responsibility of 12, we would still be on the progressive edge of juvenile justice in Asia. In Malaysia, the minimum age is 10. It is eight in Indonesia, and seven in Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand. Yet the Child Rights International Network cautions that it would be misleading to look at the ages each society settles on, “without explaining the criminal justice system that lies beneath.”
Have enough facilities, like Bahay Pag-asa, been built in the 12 years that the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act has been in effect? An ABS-CBN report quotes Commissioner Leah Tanodra-Armamento as saying that 58 such centers have been built out of the 114 the law requires. Maybe this is an area congressional oversight should focus on: the provision of facilities and intervention programs to reform children in conflict with the law and youth offenders.
Attempts to hold children criminally responsible have been pushed in several countries in the last decade, especially when politicians have framed security as an issue and preyed on people’s fears and prejudices during an election season. It is tempting to suggest that a referendum be held, coinciding with the May elections, to see whether voters agree with the urgency of lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 12, from 15.
But that would be disingenuous, because this is an issue where expert opinions must weigh more. What do the judges of family courts and the prosecutors assigned to them have to say about the matter? At least one group of experts, the Philippine Pediatric Society, has consistently opposed bringing down the age of criminal responsibility below 15 years old. Its position is that while younger children “may appear to identify right and wrong behavior, they lack an appreciation for why rules exist and the implications of these rules in society.”
If we are, as our top police officials insist, safer as a result of tougher law enforcement, then why this rush to brand children as criminals? Why not wage instead a more aggressive campaign that focuses on drug-smuggling syndicates and the adults who run them?