Juvenile justice
The video footage was as shocking as it was disturbing: on a busy Metro Manila thoroughfare with crawling traffic, a gang of very young boys run to a taxi, open the three passenger doors, spring into the taxi and in a split second, dart out and dash off back into the highway.
The video captured a case of highway robbery, using juveniles, and was used at the beginning of this week’s episode of Tina Monzon-Palma’s “Talkback.” The show focused on Republic Act 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, which exempts those aged 15 and below from criminal liability.
That law is now being blamed for an upsurge of crimes involving minors, ranging from burglaries and holdups to drug pushing. Sen. Francis Escudero is now proposing a suspension of that law while Sen. Vicente Sotto has called for lowering the age of criminal liability down to 12, and says he is willing to bring it down to as low as 9 if people want that. These proposals have met with popular support from a public that’s understandably fed up with the juvenile offenders, and with feeling helpless.
I have personally been affected by this upsurge on three occasions. The first time was two years ago, when my house was burglarized by three young boys who were able to get through the small space on top of our main gate to get into the house. They took off each with a bike but were caught by the barangay tanod shortly after.
The second encounter actually stretched out several weeks, involving two abandoned (meaning, rich owners who now lived elsewhere) houses at the end of our street. Although the neighborhood has security guards and is gated, young boys were able to get in through a creek at the back of the perimeter fence and used the unoccupied houses for their gimmicks. There was a long-drawn war of words, threats and even bullets waged between neighborhood vigilantes and the boys. It took several visits from the police and adding security guards to end the state of siege.
My third encounter was indirect, but the most serious. One of our UP students, a political science major, was stabbed to death a few months short of graduation. The killers were three boys, two of them minors, who were apparently intending to burglarize the home thinking all the occupants were out. The student’s grief-stricken father, a widower, told me of his frustration with the police who had picked up the three boys but could not do anything, even to take fingerprints, because the boys were minors.
Crime’s glamor
From those three cases we can see why adults use minors. First, kids are more agile, able to get through the most tight of spaces and situations.
Second, boys are taught to take risks, to be adventurous. Mass media coverage of children in conflict with the law (the politically correct term) may have glamorized crime, transforming it into a ritual of passage from boyhood to manhood.
Finally, there is the absence of criminal liability. In that last case I mentioned, the one with murder, a mixed-age group can actually result in the older ones going scot-free as well because there’s not enough evidence to prosecute.
Having said all that, I still question whether the solution is to lower the age of criminal liability. The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (emphasis on welfare) is very clear in stating that youthful offenders still have civil liability, meaning they have to “pay” for their crimes but not through imprisonment. Moreover, the law and its implementing rules and regulations spell out all kinds of rehabilitation measures that involve mainly the Department of Social Welfare and Development. Few of those interventions have been implemented because government has not given money to the responsible agencies. Senator Escudero himself cites the lack of funds as the reason why the law should be suspended.
We now face two bleak scenarios:
First, if we retain the law but without adequate funds for rehabilitation, we will see more minors turning to crime because they see more of their peers going scot-free and without any liability. I can see a culture of defiant impunity developing among the young.
On the other hand, bringing down the age of liability will restore another type of criminal culture. Thrown into jail with older criminals, the boys will be brutalized, even raped, and also become apprentices to hardened convicts.
What if they’re kept in separate juvenile detention centers? Again, without proper rehabilitation and counseling, they will end up embittered and angry with society. And while they’re shielded from adults in such detention centers, there will still be 15- or 16-year-old street-smart kids becoming mentors for the younger ones.
And the adults?
All the legislative amendments proposed so far focus on bringing down the age of criminal liability of the minors. I do not hear anyone talking about going after the adults. I met the grandmother of one of the kids who burglarized my home and she went into this tear-jerker story about the parents neglecting the child, a skinny waif who, she said, had tuberculosis. I wasn’t sure what to believe, but I am certain there was very serious parental neglect here, and no one is talking about going after such parents.
We’ve brought all this on ourselves with a long history of child neglect. Letting children turn to crime is the most extreme form but there’s a gray area here as well, for example, of parents who pull their children out of school and send them out into the streets. And for as long as the DSWD allows children to roam the streets, to beg or to sell flowers, we’re telling families that if you’re poor, it’s all right to send kids out into the world to make a living, by hook or by crook.
Our emphasis on punitive measures contributes to the problem. We still equate moral development with corporal punishment of the “pasaway” (errant) child, and now we’re willing to throw them into jail. And because we raise our children with “Lagot ka!” and threats of punishment, then they grow up believing that one should behave only if there’s a chance of being caught and punished.
Juvenile justice does not mean exempting a child from liability. It means getting both children and adults to take up responsibilities for wrongdoing. It means, too, a government that recognizes its responsibility to give more funds to keep children in schools, keep them off the streets, and, for the kids who do turn to crime, to get them into rehabilitation centers that do work.
Criminalize the 9-year-olds and you might prevent more kids from breaking into your homes for now, but you’ll find we will all remain in a state of siege. In a few years, these kids, moving in and out of jails and detention centers, will return, even more hardened and vicious than their mentors.
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