The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC), in partnership with the Department of Justice (DOJ), completed its first training on diversion for prosecutors and pilot implementation of the training manual.
The JJWC and the DOJ, through its National Prosecution Service Special Projects Division (NPS-SPD), rolled out said training from November 4-7.
It adopts an outcome-based education training, with modules focusing on children in conflict with the law (CICL) and the prosecutor, restorative justice, discernment as a diversion pre-requisite and the roles of a diversion authority.
Several learning activities and group exercises were conducted to further enrich the participant prosecutors’ learning experience, including mock diversion conference exercises and crafting of an actual diversion contract.
Thirty-five (35) prosecutors from different parts of the country were awarded with certificates following the culmination of the activity.
The four-day training course and pilot implementation stemmed from the multi-agency partnership of JJWC, the DOJ Committee for the Special Protection of Children, under the supervision of Undersecretary Raul Vasquez and Assistant Secretary Majken Anika Gran-Ong, and the Consuelo Zobel Alger Foundation.
The DOJ and JJWC have been working together since last year in crafting the training manual to serve as the general guide in capacitating prosecutors in their role as a diversion authority, facilitating diversion proceedings, as well as designing, implementing and monitoring diversion programs for CICL.
A pool of specialized trainers and experts on diversion was organized to draft, develop, finalize and validate the training manual and to cascade the same at the local level, for this purpose.
