Stories and Statistics of Children Behind Bars
by Father Shay Cullen
Image courtesy of Preda
The Philippine congress is debating to lower the minimum age of criminal liability from 15 years of age to nine years. Those promoting the change in the law say children are criminals and are being used by drug syndicates to commit crimes because they cannot be prosecuted. This is not true. The police should go after the drug lords, not blame the children. It seems that the criminal masterminds are immune and untouched, some are police, while the children are being jailed.
The advocates of the proposed new law claim thousands of children are into criminal acts and into drug peddling and crime. It is not true, the statistics below published by Reuters recently shows the truth that very few minors are involved in crime.
The children may be jailed or shot dead as young as nine years old if the law passes as they will be considered criminal suspects. Researchers from the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Council (JJWC) in 2016 visiting the detention centers interviewed the children and discovered that many suffered acts of abuse and even torture.
Eric is an 11-year-old street child. He looks only about six. He is malnourished and stunted like thousands of children living in poverty in the slums and on the streets of the Philippines where the wealth is in the hands of the few.
His schooling is almost zero and he has difficulty writing his name. He committed no crime but ran away from home because his stepfather beat him. He was picked up on the street by officials and was then put in a detention center and then the bad things happened to him. He was treated as a criminal and locked behind bars with other children.
They had just the empty cell, no education, no pictures just bare walls, only boredom and fear of punishment. There were no beds and he slept on a wooden bench or the floor. There was no exercise yard, they were not allowed outdoors into the sunlight. They were allowed to stretch their hands out the barred window into the sun. There were no books, comics, toys, learning materials or TV. They just had boredom and detention, cut off from the freedom they loved.
Full article on Preda website.