The Problem of Youth Offenders:
When Children Commit Adult Crimes

Statistics show that most of the Philippines’ young offenders – “children in conflict with the law” – come from poor families. Thus, most of the crimes they reportedly commit are crimes against property. Yet the country’s justice and prison system – the same system to which these youth offenders are committed – is fit only for the adult, hardened criminals. The proposal to adopt a child-friendly justice, called “restorative juvenile justice,” is a distant dream.

BY YNA SORIANO
Bulatlat.com

Marlon, 10, is the youngest ward in the National Training School for Boys (NTSB) in Tanay, Rizal, a rehabilitation center for minors with suspended sentence or with pending court cases.

Marlon was accused by his own mother of raping his younger sister several times last year in their Guinayangan residence in Southern Quezon. Marlon however denies this, saying he does not know what the word “rape” means. In his sworn statement to the NTSB, Marlon said that he only followed what his father had been doing to his sister. His father is also currently detained in the provincial jail.

Marlon is only one of the more than 10,094 Filipino children who have been involved in various crimes. The state calls them “juvenile offenders” – persons under 18 but over nine years of age at the time they committed the offense.

Problem children

Records of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) show that of the thousands, 9,390 are male and only 704 are female. Most came from the Visayas, Southern Tagalog and Ilocos regions.

In the National Capital Region, there are about 1,130 youth offenses documented. Of these, 488 are crimes against property and 263 are crimes against person. Drug-related cases number 234.

The increasing number of delinquent youth and youth offenders, admits DSWD, has been a serious concern of the government since the late 1980s. Their population doubled, for example, from 3,814 to 6,778 from 1987 to 1989. Since then, the number has been constantly and aggressively increasing, said Nelita Culong, OIC of the youth offenders division, DSWD-NCR.

“In my two decades (as a social worker),” Culong said in an interview, “the number of youth offenders has never gone down…and the nature of crimes are becoming more and more serious…”

The bigger picture

A DSWD primer on child welfare services elaborates that “youth offenders are victims of circumstances beyond their control hence they should be treated as individuals with problems who need help and not as criminals.”

Filipino youth offenders, says DSWD, should be understood in the context of the Filipino family in crisis. But then, the family as the basic unit of social production, should be further viewed as a miniature of the larger Filipino society that is in crisis.

Following the United Nations definition (that persons under 18 years old are considered children unless a state recognizes otherwise), the independent research group IBON Foundation reports that there are 34.7 million children in the country out of the total population of 75.5 million as of last year.

The National Statistics Office (NSO) reports that one out of every five Filipino children had no early education. Only 15% of children aged 3 to 5 years old are attending some early childhood program in pre-school, nursery and daycare centers.

On basic education (elementary and high school), only 77% (17.3 million) of the 22.5-million school-aged children (5 to 17 years old) were reportedly enrolled in school year 1999-2000. This means that about five million Filipino children failed to go to school at that time.

As of the last school year, the rate of completion of primary education is only 68 percent. This means that for every 100 students who enter Grade 1, only 68 are able to finish grade 6. The rates in secondary education are much lower; participation is only 65% while completion rate is 47%.

In its latest survey, the NSO documented that around 800,000 minors aged 10 to 14 years old are part of the country’s labor force. Child laborers (five to 17 years old) reportedly number around 3.7 million.

Five years ago, the number of young workers was pegged at 3.6 million. According to IBON Foundation, one in every 10 of these children engaged in heavy physical work. About 1.3 million child workers were out of school at that time.

Quoting the Bureau of Women and Young Workers, IBON says that “the economic recession…has pushed children to skip their studies and help their families augment their income. Children started competing with the adults in non-skilled jobs. And because they are willing to support their families and are ignorant of their rights, management prefers them.”

The fact that a large number of the crimes committed by juvenile offenders were crimes against property – usually theft and robbery – already indicates the economic difficulties that push them into criminal activities. Poverty, together with dysfunctional family relationships and negative peer influence, is a major factor that pushes the youth toward lawlessness.

Inadequate response

Rehabilitative services for youth offenders, since the 1960s, have been the principal solution of the Philippine government, past and present, to the persistent social problem of juvenile delinquency.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) maintains 10 regional rehabilitation centers throughout the country; biggest among these are the National Training School for Boys (NTSB) in Rizal province and the Marillac Hills for girls in Alabang, Metro Manila. There are also other youth centers run by various local government units, church-based institutions and non-government organizations.

Several advocacy groups as well as some psychologists and parents are not convinced that NTSB, Marillac Hills and government rehabilitative services could really serve their reformatory purposes.

These facilities lack personnel and social workers for the growing number of youth offenders. At Marillac, for example, there are only 25 full time social workers for its average 500 clients; at the NTSB, there are only five social workers for its average 300 clients.

Although the NTSB has its share of “success stories,” DSWD admits that these are very few. Some of its discharged clients have since been jailed repeatedly for new crimes.

While the DSWD is supposed to provide a post-care service, Gorospe of NTSB admits that it does not have the resources, mechanism and system for out-of-center guidance. Thus, most of its discharged patients are no longer monitored and supervised.

Other children NGOs criticize that the country’s juvenile justice system only intensifies the social ties that bind children to misery and criminality.

Albert Schweitzer Association, an Australian NGO for children’s rights and welfare based in the Philippines, described the government rehabilitative efforts as “ineffective.” So does the feminist NGO, the ISIS International – Manila.

Schweitzer’s social worker Agnes M. Cabauatan explained their group’s analysis that poverty is the condition that breeds “bad boys and girls.” “To bring them (youth offenders) to a center, feed them or educate them for a month to a year then discharge them back to the condition of poverty is a vicious cycle of crime and poverty,” she said.

Ma. Victoria C. Belleza of ISIS strongly suggested that government efforts should first address the root of the social problem of juvenile delinquency, which is poverty. She elaborated that the government should make sure that the basic needs of the Filipino family are addressed by the government’s social services.

Meanwhile, there are a number of laws in the country that supposedly protect and promote the interests of children. One of them is Republic Act No. 7610.

Known as “An Act Providing for Stronger Deterrence and Special Protection against Child Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination,” this law provides for a more comprehensive mechanism for child protection. But as with other laws that look good on paper, its implementation remains a big problem.

Juvenile justice

For Sen. Robert Barbers, however, the best solution to the present critical problem of juvenile delinquency is the iron hand. Barbers’ Senate Bill 892 proposes to lower the age limit of convicts who could be sentenced and thrown into the death row.

Proposals such as these are opposite to the view that young offenders still have a chance of growing up responsible and law-abiding adults if properly educated and reformed. Called restorative justice for the juvenile, this concept still advocates punishment for juvenile offenders but ensures that the punishment fits the crime.

There is no question that the country’s penal system is not fully equipped to taken in adult offenders much less the young ones. A child-friendly justice system – complete with policemen trained on the proper handling of youth offenders and a national office that will establish the national standard for juvenile justice, including recruitment of jail guards, establishment of youth centers and appointment of competent family court judges – remains a very, very distant dream.

And in the end, because juvenile delinquency is both a reflection and direct effect of the crisis besieging the family, it is the economic and political empowerment of the Filipino family that will decisively address the problem. Bulatlat.com

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