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Summary: The Senate committee on youth, women and
family relations approved the proposal less
than two weeks after CNN aired an ITN report
on how youthful offenders are detained with
hardened criminals in congested jails. The
report showed that some of the minors
became victims of pedophiles while in jail.
It took only one joint meeting for two Senate committees to approve the
proposed comprehensive juvenile justice system on Tuesday.
Sen. Joker Arroyo, head of the Senate committee on justice and human
rights, is confident the Senate will pass the bill before the Senate gets
swamped with other bills and before the political crisis worsens.
The bill, Arroyo added, enjoys bipartisan support, with Senate President
Franklin Drilon and the Senate minority leader, Aquilino Pimentel Jr.,
offering to help sponsor it once it reaches the floor.
"We have to move on. We don't want this bill to suffer the same fate it met
in the previous Congress," Arroyo said.
Sen. Maria Ana Consuelo Madrigal, the head of the Senate committee on
youth, women and family relations, will be the principal sponsor of the bill
because of its social context.
"I know the social aspect in and out. Most of them are street children,"
said Madrigal, a presidential consultant on youth affairs in the Estrada
administration.
The committees headed by Madrigal and Arroyo approved the proposal
less than two weeks after CNN aired an ITN report on how youthful
offenders are detained with hardened criminals in congested jails. The
report showed that some of the minors became victims of pedophiles while
in jail.
Arroyo explained that Sen. Francis Pangilinan had sponsored the proposal
for floor deliberations in the Twelfth Congress, but no action was taken,
because the election in May 2004 took precedence over it.
"We need a comprehensive juvenile justice system so we can properly
protect and reform our youthful offenders, not by punishing them but by
reforming them," Pangilinan said.
The two committees adopted all transcripts of meetings, records and
technical working group discussions on Pangilinan's bill. Arroyo said the
previous committee report on the juvenile justice system was very
comprehensive, involving inputs from representatives of the Department of
Justice, the Supreme Court administrator, the Department of Social Welfare
and Development, the Commission on Human Rights, the Department of
Education, the National Youth Commission and the Council for the Welfare
of Youth.
Separate bills and resolutions on juvenile justice system filed by Drilon,
Senators Ramon Magsaysay Jr., Edgardo Angara, Manuel Villar, Aquilino
Pimentel Jr. and Madrigal are considered incorporated into Pangilinan's bill.
The bill is based on the concept of "restorative justice," which reconciles
the offender with the victim and the community and assures the offender's
reintegration into society. It considers a prison term a last resort in dealing
with a juvenile in conflict with the law. If a minor is sentenced to jail, he
should be held in a prison exclusively for minors.
The committees noted that only 209 of the 1,430 jails managed by the
Bureau of Jail Management and Penology have separate cells for youthful
offenders.
Drilon, Pangilinan, Arroyo and Pimentel will help Madrigal on legal questions
of the proposal.
[End]
The Manila Times, Tuesday, August 23 2005 @ 11:02 PM BST
By: Efren L. Danao