Many Filipino Children Are Treated as Criminals

By Fr. Shay Cullen

​The lower chamber of the Philippine Congress is going to approve the lowering of the minimum age of criminal liability of a child from the present 15 years-of-age to 12-years-of-age. They really want to reduce it to 9, but public outcry forced the politicians to change. Yet, 12 years old is too young to impute criminal liability. What knowledge and discernment do uneducated, impoverished, hungry street children at 12 years old know and understand?

The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act is a good law if it were to be implemented. But it is not. Out of more than a hundred highly-urbanized cities and provinces that are supposed to build homes for the children, only 40 have done it. Unfortunately, some of these purported homes for children called Bahay Pag-asa are, in reality, jails for children where thousands now languish hungry, underfed and abused.

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