Last month, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office (FO) CARAGA and the Regional Juvenile Justice and Welfare Committee (RJJWC) held a conference to reorient members of the media on their roles and responsibilities to uphold the rights of children and to maintain accountability in reporting cases of children in conflict with the law (CICL).

“Prevention of juvenile delinquency requires heavy state intervention than tinkering on the age of criminal responsibility.”

Such is the point of view of Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Undersecretary for Protective Operations and Programs Group (POPG), Mae Fe Ancheta-Templa, regarding the calls to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR), as stated under  Republic Act (RA) No. 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act (JJWA) of 2006.

“The lowering of the MACR has never resulted in lower crime rates based on the Philippine experience and the same is true in other countries. In fact, before the passage of RA 9344, a total of 52,576 children were in detention or under custodial setting. In 2012-2015, the PNP recorded a total of 27,823 incidents of CICL cases,” she said.

She added, “The PNP data show that from 2002 to 2015, the percentage of offenses committed by children in the total number of crimes recorded is very much negligible. Specifically, the PNP data reveal that percent distribution of crime committed by adults is higher at 98%, while those of children is at 2%. In terms of seriousness of crimes following Section 20-A of RA 9344 as amended, 8% of crimes committed by children involved serious crimes while 92% categorized as non-serious.”

The Undersecretary also noted that the amendments of the JJWA under RA 10630 in 2013 were compliant to international socio-legal standards and backed by studies in order to respect both the rights of the child offender/s and the offended party.

“Child-friendly sentencing is offered by the JJWA to take seriously the nature of offense thereby making the child responsible and accountable,” she said.

Strengthening JJWA

Instead of supporting the lowering of the criminal age of responsibility of children, she proposed the need to strengthen the implementation of JJWA across all social units since child justice programs require financial, logistical, and social service support.

“Structures of support such as those indicated in the Early Years Act (EYA) as an enhancement of the early childhood care and development programs and services are important in the prevention of anti-social behavior in young people,” said Usec. Templa.

In addition, she said that parents and communities have the vital role to hone children as responsible citizens.

“Parents are the first educators in teaching children to discern and learn acceptable ways of thinking and doing. Parenting needs scientific ways of raising up young ones to be respectful of culture yet doing no harm regardless of sex identity,” she said.

Usec. Templa also noted that local government units, as first responders to cases of CICL, need to hire and ensure proper training to social workers to enable them to handle cases and appropriately carry out interventions to address the bad behavior of children.

“Full and appropriate implementation of the law by duty-bearers, especially the local government units, is the urgent call. Equally important is for national lawmakers to urge local councils to issue enabling ordinances that increase their capacities to mobilize resources towards realizing the intent of the law,” she ended. ##