SENATOR JV Ejercito is supporting the call of President Rodrigo Duterte to amend the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, which provides youth criminals aged 15 years old and below should not be imprisoned or punished even for a heinous crime.
Ejercito said the law had good intentions but was used and abused by criminals for their illegal activities.
“In my experience as mayor [of San Juan City], the youth were being used by syndicates for their criminal acts,” said Ejercito, a three-termer mayor before his mother Guia Gomez succeeded him in 2010.
“That is causing headache, but you can’t do anything because of the law,” the senator said.
He added in a mixture of Filipino and English: “We were able to arrest teenagers, but they had a ready photocopy of their pirported birth certificates.”
Ejercito said minor offenders who violated the law, especially heinous crimes, should not just go scot-free.
“It has been more than a decade since this has been passed and implemented. It is time to review and amend the law,” he said.
Senator Panfilo Lacson called on his colleagues to study the issue first, saying there was a “lot of misunderstanding.”
He said lowering the age of criminal liability did not automatically result in incarcerating 9-yr olds or execute them in case the death penalty bill was passed into law.
He said there might be features in the law that would ensure rehabilitation and exempt children from serving time upon the age of majority.
“Unfortunately, some people are bent on complaining and criticizing without first studying the issues involved. Others don’t even think before opening their mouth,” Lacson said.
Sen. Risa Hontiveros said the Duterte administration should spare children from its “fixation with regressive law enforcement measures and obsession with death.”
Lowering the age of criminal liability, she said, put children in conflict with the law at risk, making them targets of vigilante death squads.
“The better alternative is to strengthen and fully implement the existing Juvenile Justice Law at the same time that we work to improve the socio-economic conditions of living and eliminate poverty,” Hontiveros said.
“It is important to emphasize that there isn’t a silver bullet that will end the problem of children in conflict with the law. The problem has many dimensions and causes, and putting more children in jail will not solve anything,” she added.