AT age 7, Arnold (not his real name) has already learned the basics of the neighborhood illegal-drugs trade, a budding street knowledge that could very well prepare him to transform into a full-time drug peddler, or perhaps even a big-time drug lord, in a matter of a few years.
At his tender age, Arnold was already maintaining a drug den for a local drug lord in Navotas identified as “Negro,” and was even doing some errands for him, delivering and selling shabu to patrons at the Navotas fish market.
Like the others who were into the drug trade, he was also using illegal drugs.
On January 16, Arnold fell into the arms of the law. He was among the 12 minors—age 4 to 15 years old—“rescued” by operatives of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) as they raided the den where they also arrested four adults and seized at least 44 sachets of shabu.
“They were being used in the illegal-drugs trade. The children were the ones maintaining the drug den and they were tasked to sell drugs to the Navotas fishport area,” said PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino.
The alarming involvement of children in illicit drugs and other crimes is being held up as the main driver of the move in Congress to lower the country’s crime liability, or the minimum age of criminal liability (MACR), from 15 years to just 9. It’s a move being supported by other law-enforcement agencies, including the Philippine National Police (PNP).
The remedy?
The PNP supports the effort to lower the age of criminal liability, as it noted the “alarming” increase of minors’ involvement in crimes.
The PNP through its chief, Director General Oscar Albayalde, principally views the measure as a “crime deterrent,” not only for minors, but even for parents, some of whom use their children, or abet or tolerate, their involvement in illegal activities.
Congress is pushing to lower the crime liability from the law’s current MACR of 15 years old to 12 or even 9, amid the opposition of some groups and sectors and even some agencies of government.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved on second reading House Bill 8858 lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility in the country from 15 years old to 12 years old. The bill is expected to be approved on third and final reading next week.
Theft, rape and drugs
In supporting the proposal, Albayalde noted that minors have also been involved in wide-ranging cases that align them with ordinary and mature criminals, with theft, rape and illegal drugs being the top three cases that they were into or had committed.
During the past two years, or from 2016 up to 2018, the PNP chief disclosed that a total of 12,136 minors were involved in criminal cases, which he described as “very alarming.”
“Based on our records, we have children as low as 5 [years old] involved in various crimes already,” he said in one television interview.
Of the more than 12,000 minors involved in crimes, about 4,000 were involved in theft and robbery cases, 1,700 in rape and more than a thousand in illegal-drugs cases.
From January 2017 up to December 2018, some 1,300 minors were involved in illegal drugs, according to the figures of the PNP. This is more than double the 589 that the PDEA reported from July 1, 2016 up to January 2018.
Albayalde said that aside from theft and robbery, rape and illegal drugs, some children were also involved in other crimes like assault and physical injury.
Making parents more accountable
Albayalde said that while they are in agreement with the proposal being moved in Congress, the PNP also views the measure from a wider perspective; that is, that the role and accountability of both the children and parents should also be considered.
The PNP chief advocates stricter sanctions and stiffer penalties for parents who use their children in illegal activities or abet their involvement in crimes.
“Some parents even use their children in crimes,” Albayalde said, noting that in illegal drugs, children are tapped as couriers. The parents can be quite brazen here because they know the children will not end up in jail once they are arrested because they are minors.
From being couriers, the children, in some cases, even could morph into drug users and big-time neighborhood pushers.
Albayalde said the parents should share more in bearing the burden of their children’s infractions by letting them be more responsible and accountable.
At times, the offending children can even be both the victims and culprits.
“We should not only see the measure on the law enforcement side, because enforcement is very easy. If the law is violated, we can just make an arrest. We should also look as to why the children are committing crimes at their early age,” Albayalde stressed.
“Are they not in school? We should compel the parents to send their children to school,” he said.
The PNP chief said factors and other perspectives must also be considered in the effort to lower the MACR, with the end goal of making children more productive members of society.
“We also have to look at these children, we also have to look at our system. What could we do for these children?” Albayalde wondered aloud.
‘Failing them twice’
Most of the lawmakers and child-rights advocates opposing the lowering of the MACR believe that this strategy is akin to failing the children twice: first, the state fails to protect the innocent from criminals who use them for nefarious activities; and then it jeopardizes their future by tagging them as criminals and detaining them in reformatories that, for all the well-intentioned pronouncements of lower-MACR champions, are actually ill-equipped to help them turn a new leaf and become good citizens. If at all, the abject lack of good reformatories and social workers will only push the minors under rehab deeper into a life of crime and perfidy, the critics of a lower MACR say.
The government should first strongly implement the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 before asking Congress to pass the bill lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility, the lawmaker-opposers of a lower MACR assert.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said the present Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 must be fully implemented first but with the assurance of adequate funding for non-penal institutions and programs for children in conflict with the law.
“We must not expose children to the adversities of prosecutory and judicial processes just because the government has failed to implement the juvenile justice law,” he said.
“Lowering the minimum age of criminal responsibility will not result in lower crime rates. Data show that children commit only 1.72 percent of reported crimes and most of them are poverty-induced crimes like theft. Poverty is the problem which must be addressed and solved,” he added.
“Neuroscientific research documents that the brains of children do not fully develop until their early 20s. Consequently, children between the ages of 12 and 15 do not have complete faculties for discernment to make them criminally culpable,” he said.
The lawmaker said lowering the age of criminal responsibility will just encourage criminal syndicates to use even younger children.
“What should be done is not to sanction children but to have a more intensified campaign against criminal syndicates exploiting children and treble the penalty imposable on them.”
‘Factory of criminals’
Senior Deputy Minority Leader and Buhay Party-list Rep. Lito Atienza also denounced the proposed lowering of the MACR to 9 years old, calling it, “a product of obviously disoriented minds.”
According to Atienza, “The issue here is that 9 year olds do not have their own minds yet…. Do you want your child who just happens to be involved in a wrongdoing, in a delinquency case, to be considered a criminal? Would you allow that in your own conscience and your own duties as parents? I appeal to my colleagues who are also parents and grandparents—let us not jeopardize our children’s future.”
Atienza pointed out that right now, the government cannot even implement RA 9344, the original law which provides for the 15 years’ minimum age of criminal responsibility.
“We have not started construction of the so-called reformatory Bahay Pag-asa and houses to detain 15-year-old violators of the law,” Atienza added.
Due to the lack of funding for the creation and operation nationwide of the Bahay Pag-asa, children in conflict with the law are bound to be confined in jail-like facilities, and no prison is fit for a child, Lagman said.
He said only five Bahay Pag-asa units are accredited by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC) for being compliant with prescribed standards.
Oriental Mindoro Rep. Doy Leachon, the chairman of the House Committee on Justice, clarified the measure would not detain children.
He also said children will not be mixed with criminals, as children in conflict with law are going to be placed in Bahay Pag-asa for reformation, and supervision over them will be transferred to the DSWD from the local government.
But if past experience is to be a template, the goals of the lower MACR camp are far from being doable.
Indeed, as Atienza warned, the Philippines “might end up being a factory of criminals.”
With an earlier report by Jovee Marie N. Dela Cruz
Image credits: Tinnakorn Jorruang | Dreamstime.com