RA 9344 or Juvenile Justice and
Welfare Act of 2006; A Product of Congressional Hypocrisy and the Executive
Department’s Faked Advocacy
A reading of this law, which
its proponents claim to be hailed around the world as progressive and a landmark
piece of legislation, gives you a sense of the author’s (Sen. Francis “Kiko”
Pangilinan) misplaced and fancied idealism. It fails to consider the
government’s track record in implementing infrastructure aspects of legislation
that are executive in nature. And the excuse is often fashioned as, and
perennially attributed to, lack of funds.
In the case of this particular
law, they go as shameless far as to claim lack of funds, lack of proper
training and education of prosecutors and law enforcers on the intricacies of
the law, etc. It is like reading a template with some tweaks here and there
made to suit the peculiarities of a subject law.
Susmariosep, if
this is so, then what’s the incentive or compulsion in making sure that laws
succeed, when their failure has, by time, developed a “rubber stamp”
justification.
No amount of excuses should
exonerate any agency or department of government for its failure to implement
the infrastructure of a law (which I will explain below), especially so that a
law’s passage is, to a large extent, rationalized and persuaded by the safety
nets these infrastructures provide.
Infrastructure of law is the
aspect of legislation that makes the whole desirable and workable. Omit it and
the entire complexion of the law changes substantially, so that legislators may
not have been swayed in favor of its enactment had it not been in place.
Metaphorically, it is the
pairing leg to a two-legged law, the other leg being the substance of the law.
The latter is what the law is trying to achieve: in this case, to restore a
child-offender to his former state or reform him, to becoming a productive
member of society. The former, the mechanism to make sure that children are
rescued and given the needed care, attention, and affection, to keep the human
material in them, and prevent them from graduating into hardened and calloused
criminals, which in turn, should take them out of the application or protection
of RA 9344.
In other words, there is a
staging period between one point where a street child is innocent and another
where he would have become “hardened” by difficult experiences to a point of
incorrigibility. It is in that stage that the government, through the JJWC,
should act in carrying out the design of the law if it is to apply the leniency
and protection thereof. Otherwise, a child offender (incorrigibly hardened)
should be treated, under the law, just like any other offender.
We should not risk the safety
of our children and the society, in general, by allowing these kids criminals
back to the open in hope that they reform and forget the pleasures, sense of
being, nay power, they inordinately savored during their criminal reign.
Anent RA 9344, it pertains to
provisions, anchored on its declared state policy, to wit:
“(c) The State likewise
recognizes the right of children to assistance, including proper care and
nutrition, and special protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty and
exploitation, and other conditions prejudicial to their development.”
They are particularly
enumerated under Chapter I Title III of the law: the roles of Family, The
Educational System, The media, The establishment and strengthening of Local
Councils for the Protection of Children, and further scattered over the four
corners of the document embodying this legislation.
In effect, the persuasion power
of this law is in the character of prevention of the Infrastructure provision,
as gleaned from the cited policy of the state. If the state truly recognizes,
as a policy, what the law had written in it, then this law can have its shot at
success. If the state truly recognizes the right of children to assistance,
care and nutrition, protection from all forms of neglect, abuse, cruelty, and
exploitation, then we should see much less of this eventuality-turned juvenile
offenders, such that delinquency rates would have sensibly and realistically
gone down to earn it the label of success.
Sadly, the Juvenile Justice and
Welfare Council (JJWC), has failed and continues to fail to execute its
mandate.
This ineptitude, inaction, and
irresponsibility have augured well for criminals who prey on the youth,
exploiting their extentual criminal immunity, and making them foot soldiers in
carrying out their nefarious activities.
I agree that these kids are were
innocent, or at least that’s how they started. However, consider them erstwhile
innocent to be more precise. Before they were rounded up by hooligans as
recruits, they have been longtime occupants of the streets. Unwanted, uncared
for, abused, and hungry, they are exactly the subject of the infrastructure
provision of this law.
Had the government, through the
JJWC, a fourteen-member council, representing seven prime departments of
government, with extra 2 representative from NGOs, done its mandate under the
law, these kids should have been taken out of the streets into state-sponsored
caring institutions, as designed in the law, before they had been steeled and
hardened by their ensuing difficult experiences.
Now, these once pitiful and
harmless kids, by painful neglect of their plights, have become calloused and
have turned into monsters that no longer fit the description of the intended
subject of the law, as contemplated by legislators.
The bad guys all along are out
there watching and waiting for the right time to do their easy pickings.
Syndicates know that the best way to a hungry child’s heart is through the
stomach. Feed them, and promise them more of things, which theretofore they
could only dream of, and they’ll jostle mightily to get counted. Then they
start stealing, stabbing, and shooting. WITH DISCERNMENT.
Now, the government in its
attempt to defend this law, wants us to believe that, while admitting that this
has not succeeded yet, they are ready to get their acts together to put all in place
for this law to work.
What baloney! It’s like saying
“sorry, we might have to endure more senseless deaths and varied crimes
(authored by these menace called by euphemism ‘children in conflict with law,’
which is insulting to their victims) while we try to catch up. Yes you might
have to continue dying, losing properties, dealing with threats, in the
meantime. You are advised to take the necessary precautions.”
That’s how this sounds to those
who lost loved ones’, limbs, property to, and/or traumatized by, these
monsters.
Hell I’m not going to put up
with this. They come to me or my kids, I’ll shoot them, and I will bill the
government for allowing these criminals, hardened as they are, to prowl the
streets and victimize us, hapless law-abiding citizens.
The world is upside down: the
lawful constituents of society are now at the mercy of the lawless and
anarchists.
Congress had better wake up and
institute corrective legislative measures by ending this stupid law, and not
falling, again, for empty promises that make people’s safety contingent to the
government’s supposed efficiency, something it’s hardly known for.
Restorative justice, diversion
and diversion programs, interventions, etc.: words that lace this law are
nothing but lofty rhetoric. No wonder we’re tagged as a country of slogans and
acronyms, and that’s all.
We say to the government: Until
you’re ready, don’t put us before a barrel of a gun.
Don’t trial-and-error with
people’s lives, lest you end up dealing with vigilante groups forced to take
matters in their own hands to protect themselves, when they see the state
leaves itself helpless to protect its own people.
Pnoy should rally his liberal
congress occupants to arrest this before more lives are wasted if he wants to
give meaning to his the battle cry of “Matuwid na Daan?”
No comments:
Post a Comment