Congress passes juvenile justice measure

CONGRESS has passed a bill aimed at keeping children out of jail, seven years after the first such proposal was filed.

The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 was approved yesterday by a bicameral conference committee of the Senate and House of Representatives. The reconciled version is expected to be ratified this afternoon, and then will be sent for signing to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

“We are very happy,” Ma. Elena Caraballo, director of the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) says. “We will finally have this law after three Congresses.”

The first measure to establish a comprehensive juvenile justice system in the country was filed in 1999.

Caraballo hopes the law, when finally signed and implemented, “will lead to a marked improvement in how our society deals with our young offenders.”

The law puts forth a comprehensive justice system for youthful offenders, including prevention, rehabilitation, and reintegration. It creates a Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council, to be chaired by the Department of Social Welfare and Development, to implement the Act.

At present, youthful offenders fall under the jurisdiction of the Revised Penal Code and the Child and Youth Welfare Code. Children’s rights advocates have long said such laws provided procedures for young offenders that were not different from those for adults, making them vulnerable to a host of abuses.

The new law raises the age of criminal responsibility, from nine as provided in existing laws, to fifteen. A child between 15 and 18 can be charged only if it is proven that he or she committed the act with full knowledge that it was a crime.

The law’s mechanisms fall under the general framework of what children’s rights advocates call “restorative justice,” or one that presumes that children who come in conflict with the law are themselves victims.

“The law presumes that the child needs help,” says Atty. Alberto Muyot of Unicef Philippines. “And if the child can be helped,” he adds, “then he can be a responsible member of society.”

A child who is accused of having violated the law will be turned over to a welfare council, which will place the offender under what the law calls a “diversion” program. Such program, the law says, puts together “a child-appropriate process of determining the responsibility and treatment of a child in conflict with the law on the basis of his/her social, cultural, economic, psychological or educational background without resorting to formal court proceedings.”

It is estimated that there are some 20,000 children in jails across the country today, comprising a tenth of the total prison population. Since 1995, according to Unicef, over 50,000 children have been arrested and detained; 28 of them every day.

Unicef further estimates that seven of every ten child offenders have committed petty crimes, such as vagrancy, theft, and causing minor physical injuries.

Various studies by children’s rights advocates say these children live in appalling conditions while in detention, with their rights routinely violated and without any hope of being rehabilitated.

A 2005 report by Save the Children UK noted the various ways by which the rights of children in conflict with the law (CICL) are violated and ignored in the process of the administration of justice. These include:

• very stiff penalties compared to the offenses;
• abuses from law enforcers;
• violations of their basic rights, including to bail, privacy and information;
• poor conditions in police cells and jails;
• hostile and prejudicial practices and procedures in most courts;
• violations of minimum standards set by international conventions

While activists have for many years been calling attention to the plight of youthful offenders, it was fairly recently that the flames of public outrage were fanned, following a report from the news giant CNN that graphically depicted the situation of children in the Philippines behind bars. (Click here for that program’s transcript.)

There was also the similarly themed ‘Bunso,’ a gripping documentary by independent filmmaker Ditsi Carolino that made the rounds of local and international film festivals last year and in the process getting a heap of recognitions and awards. For Muyot, reports and films such as those of CNN and Carolino were able to generate enough interest among the public that, in turn, prompted Congress to hasten its deliberations on the bill.

(Last December, the Arroyo government was sued before the United Nations Human Rights Committee for “institutionalized, widespread, and continuing” practice of incarcerating some 20,000 poor children every year under deplorable conditions all over the country.)

“This law has long been delayed,” Unicef’s Muyot says. “It’s a commitment that we have for a long time failed to fulfill.” Muyot refers to the country’s commitments to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which provides, among others, that:

the right of every child alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child’s sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child’s respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child’s age and the desirability of promoting the child’s reintegration and the child’s assuming a constructive role in society.

Sadly, says Muyot, in most cases, such international treaties have failed to protect children who come in conflict with the law. Moreover, current legal mechanisms do not provide these children with adequate opportunity for reform.

“You put a child in jail, when he gets out, you can be almost sure he will go back,” Muyot says. The child is stigmatized, and any hope of this child eventually being a productive member of society is lost.

Muyot cites, in contrast, a program that is being piloted in Cebu City. Covering 12 barangays, the “community-based diversion program” uses volunteer work from members of the communities themselves to treat and rehabilitate child offenders.

The offender is called to mediation conferences with his/her family, and the victim and his/her family. A written document is issued from the meetings, outlining a program that includes remuneration for the victim, an expression of remorse from the offender, and his or her conduct of community service. A juvenile justice committee supervises the entire program.

In the first two years that the program has been implemented, Muyot happily notes, it has had a tremendous positive impact on youthful offenses. “Of the 500 offenders in those two years, only four committed another crime,” Muyot says.

In a study, University of the Philippines-Cebu professor, Felisa Etemadi found profound changes in the communities undertaking the diversion program. Etemadi noted, among others, that:

• Mediation and amicable settlement enabled children to repair the damage done to the victim or the community and start the healing process.
• Conflict resolution improved children’s relations with parents and relatives.
• Children who undergo rehabilitation were encouraged to change their behavior.

Unicef has also found, from studies not just in the Philippines but in many other countries, that a first-time youthful offender who is kept out of adult jails is eight times more likely to change and become productive, than one who is detained. Unicef further says eight of every ten children in conflict with the law are first-time offenders and will commit only one offense in their lifetime.

The new law, Muyot says, builds on these principles and uses the same framework of engaging the offender’s community in his/her rehabilitation.

Muyot tells the story of a 13-year-old girl whom he recently met in one of the cramped adult jails outside Metro Manila. “She has been in jail for three months, no hearing has been set, and she is languishing there. Do you know what she is accused of? Her neighbor says she stole her 120-peso-sandals.” Muyot is incredulous.

The passage of the bill provides Muyot and other children’s rights advocates with palpable hope. “What we want is for the child offender to be protected, and to come out of the experience as a better person.”

Click here for a copy of the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, as approved by Congress.

Read about the Cebu City experience with community-based diversion here. And this is Save the Children’s report about children in Philippine jails.