craig aquino,
Senate President Vicente ‘Tito’ Sotto III filed Senate Bill 2026 on Monday, 24 September, seeking to amend Republic Act 9344, or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, and lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) in the country from 15 to 12 years old, citing a continuing challenge in the implementation of said law.
RA 9344 ‘covers the different stages involving children at risk and children in conflict with the law from prevention to rehabilitation and reintegration.’
It provides for the procedure to be taken in the case a minor acts in violation of criminal law. It also delineates the rights of minors at risk of committing, accused of, or convicted of criminal acts.
Sotto explains why SB 2026 should be passed in the bill’s explanatory note. His argumentation, however, is pure sophistry.
In the introductory paragraph, he mentioned recent viral videos, including one of a 15-year-old beating to death another minor, one of a group of street children attempting to rob an old man, and minors stealing from a jeepney driver.
He also described recent news headlines as having ‘the same tenor’: 14-year-old boy beats elder sister to death in Aklan, Youngest surrenderer started drugs at 8, Drug war lists 20,584 kids as 'users, pushers, runners'.
These references make it appear as if child delinquency is becoming a larger and larger problem. However, this may just be a case of the mean world syndrome. The term, coined by George Gerbner, the creator of the cultivation theory of mass media, refers to how mass media can distort people’s perception of the world to make it seem more violent than it actually is.
Statistics would paint a more accurate picture of the current situation of juvenile delinquency.
There are barely, if any, for crimes in general. However, a Reuters report from 2017 does mention a PDEA statistic of 24,000 children being arrested for drug-related crimes, which is similar to one of the headlines Sotto cited, albeit the latter is from 2016. What he failed to mention however, is that that number is out of 800,000 in total arrested, meaning only 3% of drug arrests were children.
Sotto also quoted a 2017 call by President Rodrigo Duterte to lower the age of criminal liability ‘to ensure that the Filipino youth would accept responsibility for their actions and be subjected to government intervention programs’.
Sotto claimed that this is consistent with the goal of reducing criminality in the country.
However, is it really?
Making younger children liable for illegal acts they commit does not actually reduce crime — rather, it only increases the number of people punished for such. There also aren’t actually any studies or data to support the claim that a lower MACR will lead to reduced criminality.
Furthermore, younger children will be labelled as criminals. If one is to consider the labelling theory of sociology, which posits that labels applied to people affect how they perceive themselves and therefore how they act, this might actually even worsen the problem of criminality. Instead of helping children avoid a life of crime, the bill might encourage them to.
Another thing Sotto cited is the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) website, which lists minimum ages of criminal responsibility (MACRs) from different countries. He does not really elaborate on how this information supports his current proposition.
In fact, CRIN published a response in which they said that they ‘reject in the strongest terms [Sotto’s] proposal, which will serve only to criminalise more children and will do nothing to address the underlying reasons that children become involved in crime’.
In closing, Sotto wrote that ‘the State must ensure that those children in conflict with the law who are currently exempted from criminal liability [and those] who take advantage of the same must not be given the same privilege.’
However, Sotto’s sophistry alone does not make the lowering of the MACR unwise.
Some have also argued that the lower age of criminality will protect children from being used as tools in crimes such as drug smuggling.
This, of course, is false.
The lowering of the MACR will either lead to two things: criminals will either use even younger children for their purposes, or they will continue to use the same-age children and, if caught, subject to more severe punishment.
Additionally, in the context of drug crime, children aren’t actually used that much. The same Reuters report mentioned earlier said of the 24,000 minors arrested for drugs, ‘less than two percent of those minors, or about 400 children, were delivering or selling drugs. Only 12 percent, or 2,815, were aged 15 or younger. Most of the 24,000 minors were listed as drug users.’
All the aforementioned considered, now is not the time to discuss lowering the MACR.
Instead, we should focus on how we can reduce juvenile delinquency proactively — through redoubling our efforts to protect children from the circumstances leading them to criminality — ineffective parenting, harmful peer associations, poverty, and illness.
If some youth really are consistent in their criminality, we must design a more effective restorative system in order to help them become better members of society.
Currently, 15-18-year-olds who commit crimes can be detained in centres called ‘Bahay Pag-Asa’ wherein they are supposed to undergo rehabilitation. However, a Rappler report from 2016 cited Preda Foundation executive director Francis Bermido, Jr as saying ‘most of these LGU-run centers are substandard.’
Those measures, besides helping with the problem of juvenile delinquency, might in fact also help to curb crime rates in general. Solutions like this aid in identifying people-at-risk and serve as early interventions preventing them from becoming criminals.//by Craig Aquino
Opinion: Children to be slapped… on with handcuffs?
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| Photo Credit: Marco Sulla and Gail Clemente |
Senate President Vicente ‘Tito’ Sotto III filed Senate Bill 2026 on Monday, 24 September, seeking to amend Republic Act 9344, or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, and lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) in the country from 15 to 12 years old, citing a continuing challenge in the implementation of said law.
RA 9344 ‘covers the different stages involving children at risk and children in conflict with the law from prevention to rehabilitation and reintegration.’
It provides for the procedure to be taken in the case a minor acts in violation of criminal law. It also delineates the rights of minors at risk of committing, accused of, or convicted of criminal acts.
Sotto explains why SB 2026 should be passed in the bill’s explanatory note. His argumentation, however, is pure sophistry.
In the introductory paragraph, he mentioned recent viral videos, including one of a 15-year-old beating to death another minor, one of a group of street children attempting to rob an old man, and minors stealing from a jeepney driver.
He also described recent news headlines as having ‘the same tenor’: 14-year-old boy beats elder sister to death in Aklan, Youngest surrenderer started drugs at 8, Drug war lists 20,584 kids as 'users, pushers, runners'.
These references make it appear as if child delinquency is becoming a larger and larger problem. However, this may just be a case of the mean world syndrome. The term, coined by George Gerbner, the creator of the cultivation theory of mass media, refers to how mass media can distort people’s perception of the world to make it seem more violent than it actually is.
Statistics would paint a more accurate picture of the current situation of juvenile delinquency.
There are barely, if any, for crimes in general. However, a Reuters report from 2017 does mention a PDEA statistic of 24,000 children being arrested for drug-related crimes, which is similar to one of the headlines Sotto cited, albeit the latter is from 2016. What he failed to mention however, is that that number is out of 800,000 in total arrested, meaning only 3% of drug arrests were children.
Sotto also quoted a 2017 call by President Rodrigo Duterte to lower the age of criminal liability ‘to ensure that the Filipino youth would accept responsibility for their actions and be subjected to government intervention programs’.
Sotto claimed that this is consistent with the goal of reducing criminality in the country.
However, is it really?
Making younger children liable for illegal acts they commit does not actually reduce crime — rather, it only increases the number of people punished for such. There also aren’t actually any studies or data to support the claim that a lower MACR will lead to reduced criminality.
Furthermore, younger children will be labelled as criminals. If one is to consider the labelling theory of sociology, which posits that labels applied to people affect how they perceive themselves and therefore how they act, this might actually even worsen the problem of criminality. Instead of helping children avoid a life of crime, the bill might encourage them to.
Another thing Sotto cited is the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) website, which lists minimum ages of criminal responsibility (MACRs) from different countries. He does not really elaborate on how this information supports his current proposition.
In fact, CRIN published a response in which they said that they ‘reject in the strongest terms [Sotto’s] proposal, which will serve only to criminalise more children and will do nothing to address the underlying reasons that children become involved in crime’.
In closing, Sotto wrote that ‘the State must ensure that those children in conflict with the law who are currently exempted from criminal liability [and those] who take advantage of the same must not be given the same privilege.’
However, Sotto’s sophistry alone does not make the lowering of the MACR unwise.
Some have also argued that the lower age of criminality will protect children from being used as tools in crimes such as drug smuggling.
This, of course, is false.
The lowering of the MACR will either lead to two things: criminals will either use even younger children for their purposes, or they will continue to use the same-age children and, if caught, subject to more severe punishment.
Additionally, in the context of drug crime, children aren’t actually used that much. The same Reuters report mentioned earlier said of the 24,000 minors arrested for drugs, ‘less than two percent of those minors, or about 400 children, were delivering or selling drugs. Only 12 percent, or 2,815, were aged 15 or younger. Most of the 24,000 minors were listed as drug users.’
All the aforementioned considered, now is not the time to discuss lowering the MACR.
Instead, we should focus on how we can reduce juvenile delinquency proactively — through redoubling our efforts to protect children from the circumstances leading them to criminality — ineffective parenting, harmful peer associations, poverty, and illness.
If some youth really are consistent in their criminality, we must design a more effective restorative system in order to help them become better members of society.
Currently, 15-18-year-olds who commit crimes can be detained in centres called ‘Bahay Pag-Asa’ wherein they are supposed to undergo rehabilitation. However, a Rappler report from 2016 cited Preda Foundation executive director Francis Bermido, Jr as saying ‘most of these LGU-run centers are substandard.’
Those measures, besides helping with the problem of juvenile delinquency, might in fact also help to curb crime rates in general. Solutions like this aid in identifying people-at-risk and serve as early interventions preventing them from becoming criminals.//by Craig Aquino
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