EDITORIAL - Juvenile criminals

A recent incident in Quezon City in which two brothers, both minors, were zapped with a stun gun by barangay tanods after they were caught stealing has drawn varied reactions from the public.

There are those who condemned the tanods, since suspended and slapped charges, for using violence against the boys. On the other hand, there are also those who say the boys, notorious in their neighborhood as thieves, got what they deserved.

Maybe the incident was just a little bit extreme and bizarre. But actually it is a continuing manifestation of a growing phenomenon that government has chosen to almost completely ignore.

The involvement of children in crime, and the existence of laws that refuse to mete them any punishment, cannot go on being ignored forever. It has become an increasingly threatening social problem. We cannot wait until it explodes in our faces.

The motives of the framers of laws protecting children have to be noble. But laws are only as good and effective as the circumstances allow them. Sadly, in the Philippines, the social circumstances only open the laws protecting children to abuse.

Right here in Cebu City, there are bands of children, some as young as five or six, who gang up on unsuspecting victims, consciously avoiding to do the children any harm even as they get overwhelmed by the sheer number of the thieves, who seize what they can lay their hands on.

These children get occasionally rounded up, only to be promptly released because our laws prevent them from being punished. This anomaly is not lost on criminal syndicates. It is clear from the way these children operate that the syndicates have gotten to them and are using them.

It would therefore not come as a surprise if, while people publicly condemn the atrocity committed by the barangay tanods in Quezon City, these very same people would curse the children under their breaths and probably even agree that the young thieves got what they deserve.

On the other hand, what kind of signal are we sending our law enforcers? If law enforcers get jailed for going after thieves, what reason is there for them to continue protecting our communities, including the homes of those who cry crocodile tears for misguided juveniles?