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Welcome to
N A N A Y
PHILIPPINES
-- Where young and old in the Philippines and abroad
support and recognize each other as important members
of society
NEWS UPDATES
Childhoods lost in Philippine jails
By JOHN O'CALLAGHAN
Reuters
ABS-CBN NEWS
October 12, 2005
CALOOCAN CITY - At age 14, Christian was taken to a city jail in the Philippines
on charges of selling and using a powerful methamphetamine
known as "shabu".
Nearly three years later, he is still in a cell, smaller than a boxing ring,
with 28 other youths awaiting a verdict in court.
But Christian and his young cell-mates are lucky. Caloocan City Jail, on the
northern outskirts of Manila, is one of very few in the
Philippines where minors are separated from adults.
Largely because the government cannot afford other options, most of the
thousands of juveniles detained each year must fend for themselves in
overcrowded jails among grown men charged with murder, rape and other
violent crimes.
For many, their families do not have the money that can help speed up a
notoriously slow and overloaded justice system.
"They should not be here. It is the court who orders them to stay,"
said Alejandro Almacen, the warden of Caloocan City Jail.
"If they are incarcerated now, it will ruin their futures."
Children as young as 9 can be jailed in the Philippines. In Indonesia,
criminal liability starts even lower at age 8, while it is 14 in Japan.
"The most difficult part is losing hope," said Christian, protesting
his innocence. "Because of them, I was not able to pursue my studies
and I was separated from my family."
After sporadic hearings, he is no closer to knowing his fate on the drug
charges. The more serious of the two, selling shabu, has a
mandatory sentence of life in prison or the death penalty.
Crime and punishment
With a third of the 86 million people in the
Philippines living on a dollar a day and families commonly having six, seven or
eight children, studies by various groups show that
poverty, desperation and neglect play large roles in
youth crime.
Juvenile Justice Network-Philippines, which works with young offenders,
estimates there were more than 4,000 children in jails and detention
centers in September.
"Most of them were charged with minor crimes such as petty theft, sniffing of
glue or solvents, vagrancy and violation of curfew hours," it
said in a statement urging faster action on a bill in Congress to
set up a separate legal track for minors.
The group says about 240 juveniles are serving sentences in adult
penitentiaries, including 18 on death row who cannot prove they are
minors because they have no birth certificates.
By detaining children with adults and sentencing them to capital punishment, the
Philippines is breaking international treaties it has
signed and its own laws.
Responsibility for young offenders rests with local authorities, but the justice
department has started to address the issue by working with
several other agencies to determine the exact number of jailed minors
and to share resources.
"We really have to decongest our prisons and detention cells," Justice Secretary
Raul Gonzales said on television.
Proposals for a stand-alone system for young offenders, including punishment
options such as community service, have been in Congress
since the 1990s.
Senators in the upper house have resumed deliberation on the Comprehensive
Juvenile Justice System bill.
The bill would raise criminal liability to age 12, provide separate detention
centres for children, establish diversion programmes at the
community level and create the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention.
But it is a long way from being passed, with anti-terrorism legislation,
hundreds of other bills and a variety of inquiries also
demanding the attention of Congress.
Even with the juvenile justice law, the debt-laden government would have to find
funding for the program and facilities.
Lost childhood
The United Nations' children's agency, UNICEF, has joined with Juvenile Justice
Network-Philippines and other groups to publicize the issue of
minors in jail and push for reforms.
"In many cases a child is charged with an offense where the penalty is only 10
days in prison or a one-dollar fine," said Alberto Muyot, a
lawyer who works for UNICEF.
"That child may eventually be released after the process has gone through,
perhaps after a period of 12 months, so that's one year taken
away from the life of a child for something so small."
The plight of these children was highlighted in "Bunso" (youngest), a
documentary film by Ditsi Carolino that tracked three boys held at a
jail on the central island of Cebu.
They and dozens of other minors were packed into one cell but mingled with the
adults during the day. Food was in short supply and the flimsy
roof leaked whenever it rained, soaking the thin mats and cardboard the
boys used as beds on the concrete floor.
Two city jails shown to Reuters were far cleaner and better equipped than the
one in "Bunso".
Improvements to protect and help juveniles have been made in some
facilities since the film was shot in 2001, but the majority remain
spartan at best.
In Caloocan, the minors have too few simple plywood beds to go round. But they
do have a solid roof, regular meals, a television, portable
stereo and basic lessons in mathematics, science and English given once
a week by a local teacher.
Jesper, 14, was arrested after being implicated by a friend who confessed to
stealing and trying to sell steel pipes worth about $5. He
had been at the jail for a week, had not seen a lawyer or a judge, and
had no idea how long he would be there.
"I miss my family," Jesper said in a soft, halting voice. "There's nobody to
talk to here."
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