Council wants amendment to juvenile law

CEBU, Philippines - Concerned over the incidences of crime involving minors, the Cebu City Council is now asking the police authorities to make a comprehensive study for the possible amendment to the Juvenile Justice law.

During its recent session, the Cebu City Council has adopted resolution authored by Councilor Edgardo Labella, chairman of the committee on laws, asking the police to undertake appropriate actions to statistically support the growing need to amend the Republic Act 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006.

Labella also asked the Congress to cast a serious reexamination of the provisions of Republic Act 9344 in the direction of infusing appropriate, timely and relevant amendments to the law.

Several sectors of the community, including those in Cebu City, are clamoring for changes in the said law to achieve its purpose of protecting the minors from their pliant tendencies toward delinquency.

Labella said the recent admission of five teenagers involved in the killing of a taxi driver in Mandaue City again calls for the need of reviewing the “child-friendly” Republic Act 9344 “which has for sometime brewed apprehensions of concerned sectors in Cebu City.”

The north district councilor explained that while the concerned law was designed to promote and protect the best interest of a child, it may also directly or indirectly spur juvenile delinquents to have “no qualm to commit crime because these minors would hardly be penalized.”

“The disheartening precedence of many youth offenders who have been completely exempt from criminal liability may have again, encouraged teenagers, all members of the Crips gang to commit a crime just so they would have money to buy a bottle of liquor,” the councilor said.

RA 9344 provides that children 15 years and under at the time of the commission of the offense are exempt from criminal liability. Children above fifteen years but below eighteen years of age, at the time of the commission of the offense, are also exempt from criminal liability unless proven that they acted with discernment.

The procedures provides that an arrested minor offender should be immediately turned over by the apprehending policeman to thePNP’s Women and Children section or to the designated Children in Conflict With the Law investigator upon reaching the police station.

The CICL manual calls on police officers to refrain from exposing CICL in the media and to stop the practice of placing them inside cells while in detention.

Under the Child Abuse Law, a person above eighteen years of age but unable to fully take care and protect themselves from abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation or discrimination because of physical or mental disability or condition is also considered a child.   (FREEMAN NEWS)