Wrong targets

Malacañang and authors of the bill that first lowered the age to nine for children who engage in criminal acts have now agreed to make 12-year-olds accountable for committing criminal acts which include getting involved in drugs.

“Government instead should shift its focus from lowering the age of criminal liability to amend the existing Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act.

The old law makes 15-years-olds accountable for criminal offenses they had committed and who probably didn’t have lawyers to defend them, as most come from poor families who have no money for the bail, something which would now also happen to the 12-year-old offenders.

One wonders: Have these young offenders spent time in jail where the conditions are such that it makes them an even worse criminal, after being exposed to gangs in jails that are already too congested and more besides?

Why should the House and yes, even the Senate, even want to lower the age to 12? Does it make any difference if the young offender is a pre-teen or a teenager? Do three years make any difference in youthful criminals?

Sorry, but there is just no rhyme or reason for Congress or even the Palace to lower the age of criminal offenders.

And are there even enough government rehabilitation centers to house these young offenders, whether 12, 13, 14 or 15 years of age? That’s seriously doubted.

Government instead should shift its focus from lowering the age of criminal liability to amend the existing Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act, but to amend it to strengthen the law, making it more compassionate.

But all these members of Congress want is to give the public the impression that they are trying to fix criminal problems, focusing on petty crimes committed by the young and ignoring the serious crimes that some legislative members commit and get away with.

And there is more: Some House members and the Palace also want to make the parents of the 12-year-old caught committing the criminal offense also liable for the crime committed by their child, who is not even a teenager.

But why should the parents of a 12-year-old suspect be made liable under any law, especially if the parents had nothing to do with the criminal offense in the first place?

How on earth can such a law be legal, since it is not the parents who committed the criminal act? It would be pretty difficult to prove their participation in the crime committed by their child unless of course, the 12-year-old can point to his parents or a drug runner as the persons who had ordered the child to, say, deliver the drugs to whoever and gets caught by authorities.

But no law should pin a crime committed by 12-year-olds on parents on account of pure speculation.

This issue is more or less similar to the issue that cropped up in the past where children who were out at night, either selling flowers or begging drivers or even just strolling around, while sexual predators and pedophiles are on the lookout for such young kids, also had the national police “arresting” them after curfew hours and insisted on bringing the parents before the courts, making them responsible for their children’s nighttime activities.

That was clearly unconstitutional and, eventually, the government backed off from tagging the parents. Kids caught where brought not to jail but to some kind of halfway house where some kind of rehabilitation is done to help the very young.

That’s not the only problem that has to be faced, as many poverty-stricken parents are forced into getting their children to commit criminal offenses, getting their kids, under-aged mostly, to commit crimes, petty crimes or otherwise, since such parents seem to be convinced that their kids will get off easily while the parents believe that they can get off easy, too. Still, it is wrong to get the parents arrested simply because their 12-year-old was caught committing a criminal offense.

But even that law changing the age of nine to 12, if passed, will still encounter more problems that may prove to be no different from the problem of housing drug offenders and making them go through drug rehabilitation programs.

One hardly hears about the drug rehabilitation programs and their facilities, as well as their rate of success. How many have gone back to drugs and criminality?

In the same manner, one hardly hears about those halfway houses for young kids who are claimed to be undergoing rehabilitation.

Not even basic questions are aired, such as how long are these children kept in such homes and just how many of them have gone back to their old ways of committing criminal offenses?

Go after the big-time criminals instead, especially those found in the Senate and the House.