Solon fears jail time for child offenders due to lack of reformation facilities

A member of the House of Representatives fears that children in conflict with the law may still end up in jail due to the lack of facilities and infrastructure to rehabilitate them as mandated by the measure seeking to lower the age of criminal responsibility.

The chamber on Tuesday began the plenary deliberations on House Bill 8858 which aims to lower the age of the criminal responsibility from 15 to nine years old.

According to Committee on Justice chair Salvador Leachon, who sponsored the bill in the plenary, there is no imprisonment under the measure.

However, there is mandatory confinement if the age of the child who committed the offense would be nine years old and below 15 years old and committed serious offenses such as murder, parricide, infanticide, serious illegal detention, carnapping, and violation of the dangerous drugs.

Children who committed these crimes, Leachon added, would not be detained in regular detention cells but in the reformation center Bahay Pag-asa.

But during his interpellation, Bukidnon Representative Manuel Zubiri asked if the support system and infrastructure for children in conflict with the law are ready and sufficient.

He said in far-flung areas, particularly in Mindanao, some law enforcement officers may misinterpret the law and put the children's lives at risk or in danger.

"Due to the lack of infrastructure or facilities by the agencies involved, our children will end up in the slammer or jail whether temporarily or permanently, or even dead," Zubiri said.

"If there is a law officer out there that will just make a mistake, and he does not understand what this bill is, our children can end up dead. And we don't want that to happen," he added.

At the same time, Zubiri said nine-year-olds have not yet developed enough mental capacity to understand the consequences of the crime they may have committed.

"The problem is if they end either in the slammer or a boys' town of some sort, ang mangyayari nito, they will be scarred for life. And this is a proven fact worldwide," he added.

Zubiri urged his fellow lawmakers to conscientiously decide whether the measure is good for children and for the nation in general.

"Before we decide to make this bill passed, let us sit down, discuss and think hard whether this is good for our nation moving forward," he said.

In response, Leachon said the lack of proper reformation facilities for children in conflict with the law is exactly why there is a need for such legislation.

"It's actually a good start and to have this, we'll be eventually filling up those gaps as inadvertently unforeseen and not implemented by the previous law," he said.

"This is actually the enabling law in order to make it happen. Because here, there will be a mandate to fund it, to transfer the supervision and maintenance from the provincial government to the national government, and to create plantilla," he added.

Under House Bill 8858, a child nine years old and below at the time of the commission of offense would be exempted from criminal liability, while those above nine years old but under 18 years old would be exempted from criminal liability unless the minor acted with discernment. —LDF, GMA News