Juvenile council head laments lack of facilities for children in conflict with law

The head of the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC) lamented Tuesday the lack of facilities to effectively implement the law dealing with children who commit crimes.

Tricia Clare Oco, JJWC executive director, said no Intensive Juvenile and Intervention Support Center (IJISC) has been established since the Juvenile Justice Act was enacted in 2006.

“Unfortunately, isa sa monitoring namin wala tayong Intensive Juvenile and Intervention Support Center which should be in the Bahay Pag-asa.  Not one has established that. That’s one of the problems we have,” he said during the first hearing of the Senate justice and human rights panel on the proposed lowering of age of criminal responsibility.

She said children who were arrested for heinous crimes should be brought to the IJISC and undergo the program but that was not happening because of the lack of facility and qualified personnel to run it.

“Kasi ‘yung nga batang ‘yun pag nag(commit ng) murder hindi n’yo sila dapat pakawalan. But that is what is happening now, the barangays or duty implementors, sometimes if the child is below 15 years old, they think pakakawalan kasi hindi pwedeng kasuhan,” she said.

“Actually dapat nilalagay sila sa detention center at meron silang programs, they have to undergo that kind of program,” she added.

Senator Risa Hontiveros asked the status of the Bahay Pag-Asa, or halfway houses where children in conflict with the law should stay, which was supposed to be established in every province and every high-urbanized cities.

Oco said there are only 63 Bahay Pag-Asa in the country but five of these are non operational, 55 are run by local government units and three run by non-government organizations.

She said that most of these have sub-human condition.

“For those operational, they don’t have sufficient budget kasi merong tayong standard kung ano ang minimum na laman ng Bahay Pag-asa, ano ang programs dun.  Kawawa ‘yung mga namomonitor namin sa Bahay Pag-asa,” she said.

She said there were ideal Bahay Pag-asa such as the one in Valenzuela City but the rest has “subhuman conditions, they lack the  minimum staff requirement, they lack food for children.”

“Some that we saw mas malala pa sa kulungan dahil walang programs, walang, beds, walang cabinet. Ang mga bata they are just  told to keep quiet the whole day so some of them they do self harm because they are very bored,” she told the committee. —LDF, GMA News