Reformatories place for delinquent children

A special reformatory will have to be established to accommodate the great number of juvenile delinquents who are now being treated like adult criminals.

A week or so ago, a CNN news report in international television came out that in the Philippines, juvenile delinquents were imprisoned with adult criminals. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came out with the statement that young offenders should be kept on special welfare homes for children and not to be imprisoned with hardened criminals. She also told Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales to look into the matter. The law is clear. It says that offenders below the age of 18 should be turned over to the Social Welfare Department or kept in the custody of their parents.

This is a complicated problem. First, as Secretary Gonzales was the very first to point out, the social welfare office does not have the accommodations and funds to lodge all these children. No one is even sure of their approximate number. Senator Ralph Recto has estimated that there are about 2,100 children in adult jails. But the Juvenile Justice Network believes that there are 54,000 juvenile delinquents who are in prison. It is very clear that a special reformatory will have to be established to accommodate the great number of juvenile delinquents who are now being treated like adult criminals. They should be in a reformatory where they can go to school and be taught a trade that will give them a means of support once they have served their sentence.

We have always looked at the street children as the Holy Innocents of our times. They are definitely the most disadvantaged group in Metro Manila. We wish that all the Mayors of Metro Manila could get together and provide homes to accommodate all these children.

I look at children as our most precious natural resource and whenever I see the street children, day in and day out, I get a guilt feeling that society is not doing anything for them. Now with the problem of juvenile delinquents in jail with hardened criminals, we think that the street children are more fortunate than they are. At least, they are free. Their problem, of course, is where their next meal is going to come from and where they will find a peaceful place to sleep after sunset.

One of the classic definitions of a prison is "a monument to neglected youth." In short, many prisoners are actually victims of society. They got exposed to the wrong values. Children can learn from their elders. But not in prison.

The ultimate solution to the problem is to provide the Social Welfare Department with the necessary funds to provide the proper reformatory for juvenile delinquents. This should have been done long ago, but as they say, "Better late than never." You can be sure that if you study the individual cases of all the children that are now classified as delinquent, we will discover that most, if not all, were neglected by their parents. Yet we have the term "delinquent children" but no phrase for "delinquent parents." We also say "illegitimate children." Actually, there are no illegitimate children. There are only illegitimate parents. It was the parents that were responsible for the illegitimacy.