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Aimee Lorraine C. Capinpuyan Mr. Maximino Pulan Jr. En 101 M02 10 Dec Imprisonment as an Effective Means of Rehabilitating Children in Conflict with the Law in the Philippines My name is Miguel. I am sixteen years old. I was accused of robbery together with two other boys. One of our companions escaped. I am only an accomplice but I am being accused of planning the whole thing. I am currently in Western Samar Municipal Jail. Miguel is only one of the hundreds of children in the Philippines who have come into conflict with the law. While such children are commonly referred to as juvenile delinquents, this paper shall refer to them as children in conflict with the law, or CICWL (CICL in other texts), since the term delinquents connotes a guiltiness that, as this paper will explain, children cannot be charged with. Usage of the loaded term juvenile delinquents is but one of the many issues that Philippine CICWL are faced with. Out of all these problems, this paper will be dealing mainly with the situation of children in prison in the Philippines and how the Philippine prison environment in general is detrimental to the rehabilitation of CICWL. I. Responsibility of the CICWL in a Criminal Situation

Generally, in the Philippines, children in conflict with the law, or CICWL, can be classified according to certain characteristics. These are a history of family violence,

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a formal education, maturity, and gender. According to a study conducted in 2004 by Save the Children UK, majority of the CICWL in prison have been physically abused by a relative or a parent. Majority of the children that were also included in the same study have reached at least sixth grade, while 36% of the convicted children in Davao and 38% of those in Metro Manila have been in high school. However, majority of those in Cebu and in Metro Manila during the time of the offense have stopped schooling after age fourteen. The study has found that in these prisons, only a few of the children have had no formal education at all (5% and 1% in Davao and Metro Manila, respectively). The reason for why these children are unable to finish their studies, as presented in a survey done by the same organization amongst the Cebu children, is that a lack of financial resources or influence from their peers. The average age of CICWL in prison is fourteen years. Although majority are over fourteen, and the average is affected by there being children coming in conflict with the law as young as five or six years old. Gender-wise, all studies show that more boys come into conflict with the law than girls. In prisons, there are more male inmates than female. The study raises the question of what causes these children to come into conflict with the law in the first place. The answer is poverty. It has been found that poverty is the basic cause for offending, mainly because most crimes committed in poverty are committed for the sake of survival. The commission of such crimes is called survival offending. Domestic violence is another cause of children coming into conflict with the law. Domestic violence results in children being incorporated into a life of violence at a

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very young age, thereby pushing them to run away from home and live outside with their barakadas. On a larger scale, the social environment in which the child grew up also greatly influences his or her tendency to offend. The social environment referred to here is in the form of lack of parenting skills, early marriage and the disintegration of the family system. The study also reports that both children and adults saw pornography, peer pressure, lack of education, and lack of recreational facilities as contributing factors. Another factor that affects the future of these children is a history of family violence. More than half (54%) of the twenty-eight CICWL being held in the Community Scouts Center in Cebu say that they were abused by a family member. And out of the twenty-one children included in the case studies, six clearly came from violent, abusive homes. Out of these six, three ran away from home, and two say that the improper attitudes of their parents are what pushed them to offend. Because of all the factors listed above, it is difficult to classify children as responsible or not responsible for their actions. However, when we speak of classifying CICWL in the Philippines, no concrete method has been devised of telling whether a child is fit or unfit to be sent to jail. The Constitution indicates only which jail the child will be to be sent to. For example, a child with a sentence from one day up to six months is sent to the municipal jail. A child sentenced up to six years is sent to the city jail. And if the penalty exceeds six months but the crime was committed in the municipality, the child is sent to the provincial jail. Sentences over three years long are served in the centers managed by the Bureau of Corrections.

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These conditions alone are insufficient means of telling whether a child should even be sent to jail in the first place. However, Lars-Christer Hydn, author of The Social Construction of Juvenile Delinquency, argues that children are incapable of free moral judgment and are therefore only partially responsible for their actions and can, in general, be excused from crimes. The actions of children are considered impulsive; they do not know how to weigh their judgment against the social norms, and we can consider children as lacking the mental capacity to evaluate behaviour in a way considered as mature in society. Presumably, they develop in their teen years the ability to evaluate their own actions against general moral standards. However, there is some uncertainty as to whether teenagers of ages fifteen to eighteen can be held fully responsible for a crime, because it is during these times in which a person transitions from being a child with no responsibility to being an adult who has to take responsibility (Hyden 9). There is an uncertainty as to whether teenagers act with full moral insight about their actions, and this is one of the grey areas of the study. Hydn cites some examples of social circumstances which will make a crime pardonable, and these are growing up under socially or psychologically depriving environments. In a Philippine context, environments such as these may be the streets where homeless children live, or an abusive household. Here, the social and moral rules are different, because the child finds him or herself in a position where he or she is the one who must find food or defend his or herself. In evaluating how much responsibility a child really holds when he or she commits a crime, Hydn cites Feinberg as the source of a model called the responsibility paradigm.

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A criminal is defined by a paradigm that dictates who is responsible for the actions and consequences of a liability. In legal terms, for a person to be a criminal, he or she must have a connection to the crime that makes it very clear that it was that person who committed it. But aside from this, it is important to know the context in which the crime was committed. Only then can we judge how responsible a person really is for an action. (Hyden 9) In summation, children in general cannot be considered criminals because the actions that they commit are not entirely actions of their own making. A history of family violence or a background in poverty might have led them into offending, and aside from that, children lack the moral consciousness for us to charge them completely responsible of their actions.

I.

CICWL in Jail

There has been much debate abroad over whether the focus of the juvenile justice system should be on rehabilitating CICWL or punishing them. While information on that topic in the Philippines cannot be found as of the time being, the distinction between punishment and rehabilitation can still be defined using the principles discussed by Hydn. When we speak of punishment, we say that they are usually given because of an action already committed. It seeks to enforce discipline and structure on an individual Treatment, on the other hand, is future-oriented. It focuses on future development, and the production of well-integrated, contributing members of society. It looks on past actions as important only when they are indicators of possible future actions that

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may conflict with his or her development as a citizen. Hydn says of this, Treatment is prospective, while punishment is retrospective. And if a punishment robs a person of space and time, non-mandatory treatment offers him or her space and time in the form of possibilities: the opportunity of a new life in terms of education, economic support, housing, [and etcetera]. In the Philippine context, majority of the children being sentenced to jail are being punished and not rehabilitated. Evidence of this are the poor living conditions in most Philippine jails. One of the major complaints of inmates in city, provincial, or municipal jails is the crowdedness. The lack of cells in these jails can be attributed to the national government failing to allot enough funds for the BJMP, or the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology. Rural or provincial jails suffer the worst effects of this. Samar Provincial Jail constructed a makeshift structure in the corner of the courtyard to house excess inmates. The roofs of this building are made of plastic and tarpaulin, offering little comfort during summers and rainy days. In Tacloban City Jail, thirty-four children are being crammed into one cell. One of the kids even called it a can of sardines. Another one of the problems within Philippine jails is that while most jails have separate cells for the children and the adults, these cells are separated only by metal grills, allowing the adults to interact with the children. This is not beneficial for the child, as communicating with the adults increases the risk of the child being recruited in gangs or socialized into the world of violence and crime. Increased interaction between children and adult inmates also heightens the risk of the child getting abused. Samar Provincial Jails response to this is they assigned a jail guard whose main

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function is to keep watch over the children. A social worker form the Regional Rehabilitation Center for Youth in Tanawan says some jails put children in the same cell as the adults because they were not recognized as children (they lacked birth certificates and the like). These two problems stated above result in there being no cells set aside for female youths. One other reason for this is the fact that there are only few girls who come in conflict with the law. It is an accepted practice in Tacloban City Jail to mix the female children with the adult inmates, and in Tarangan Municipal Jail in Western Samar to put all children in the same cells as the women. These practices are commonly thought of as beneficial for the children, as female inmates are thought to be caring and showing motherly concern for the youths. However, there are no studies that support this. Another problem within jail that is detrimental to the CICWL is the quality of the food in prison. With each inmate having a food allowance of only thirty to thirty-five pesos per day, and given that each inmate is served three square meals a day, the quality, variety, and nutritive content of the food cannot be guaranteed. A social worker from one of the jails included in the study reports that the food is haphazardly prepared. The fare is usually dried fish, watery vegetables, and rice. It is interesting to note that many of the children reported that they actually enjoy the food being served to them in jail. They were contented with being served food on a regular basis, much unlike when they were living outside the jail. This, however, denotes the sad situation of these children who may not have had enough to eat prior to their detention because they come from poor families.

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There is also a lack of beddings inside the prisons. Some children, whose families fail to provide them with blankets, sheets, and mats, are forced to sleep on the bare floors or on boxes of cardboard. Lastly, there are issues with the sanitary facilities and electricity. Sanitary facilities in the jail are poor most jails dont have potable drinking water and there is a lack of running water. The jails experience constant problems with the power supply. The lack of water and electricity, according to Trinidad, Manzano, and Puzon, are because the BJMP cannot afford to pay for these regularly. All in all, these conditions are seen as harmful and not beneficial to the CICWL, and therefore children will benefit greatly should these conditions be improved upon. Trinidad, Manzano and Puzon have this to say: The deplorable conditions [in these jails] are not beneficial to CICWL. Instead of making their detention in jail a rehabilitative experience, their stay only underscores the punitive nature of the jail system in the Philippines. Because of the sub-human conditions in some of these jails marked by the lack or unavailability of even the most basic of amenities and provisions such as water, their stay becomes a long drawn punishment. Not all experiences in jail, however, are a long drawn punishment. Not having to worry about their next meal, some children see their experience in jail as a positive one. They say that they appreciate the sense of order and discipline in their lives they had not experienced in their homes. Some detention centers provide children with guidance counselling through religious groups, enabling a richer spiritual formation in the CICWL. Some children, despite the gangs and lawlessness in jails, find helpful

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peers who help them cope and fill their need for friendship and affection, sometimes acting as mentors or kuyas. They give the CICWL a sense of direction by sharing their own experiences.

II.

Discourses Within the Prison System There are three identifiable discourses within the prison system, as discussed

by Adler and Longhurst. These three are the rehabilitation discourse, control discourse, and the normalisation discourse. The principles behind these discourses were formulated from the prisons in Scotland. However, we will still be able to apply them to the prison systems in the Philippines. The first discourse, which most Philippine prisons employ, is the control discourse. This ideology is all about conformity. It does not care about the positive change that should be brought about in an individual, or the normalisation of the prison; rather, it asserts that prisoners should conform to the standards of the prison in order to maintain peace and order. This discourse is particularly concerned with the protection of the prison staff. In the Philippines, most of the Philippine jails do not actively attempt to bring about a positive change in the inmates. Rather, they maintain that prisoners conform to the standards of prison. Because of this, it can be said that most Philippine jails are employing the control discourse. This kind of insensitivity to the inmates is one of the main concerns in the studies of Trinidad, Manzano, and Puzon. Officers reportedly fail to protect children from gangs that initiate potential members by forcing them to commit acts of violence, or by making the children the victims of gangs themselves. Failure to obey the orders of the leader causes the child

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to be beaten and abused. There are also reports of children being sexually abused by the other inmates, or sometimes, fellow children. The second discourse is the normalization discourse. Here, the focus is diverted from the prison experience being a punitive one to the prison experience being more casual. The inmate is seen as a normal individual who happens to have committed a crime for which he or she has to be sent to prison for. Characteristics of this discourse are minimum security, allowed contact between the prisoner and his or her family, and improved living conditions. In this study, only one jail has found to be making use of this discourse, and that is Western Samar Municipal Jail. Of his stay in this jail, Miguel, the boy introduced at the beginning of the paper, has the following to say: The jail isnt really a jail. I can move around freely and even go home to visit my family or to take baths. The police let me out whenever I feel like it. The police are kind to me. I am close to one of [them]. I like him because he is like a kuya to me. Another policeman is also okay because he makes me attend church services. I can watch television until late at night and can wake up any time I want. I usually sleep at the office of the police. I have my own beddings supplied by my family... It is okay in the cell, I dont even have to worry about mosquitoes because I am given mosquito coils to use at night. When I am bored, I play with the guard dogs. Sometimes, I play basketball with my friends.

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The food is okay. We usually have rice, vegetables, dried fish, and even chicken. We normally eat the same food as the policemen. Sometimes, the police ask me to do some tasks for them like cleaning the yard of the headquarters. I am paid for this most of the time. (Trinidad 31) Miguels account shows how Western Samar Municipal Jail makes use of the normalisation discourse. The last discourse is called the rehabilitation discourse and is also referred to as the treatment model. It is the one that is concerned with improving the individual. Its focus is the deviant individuals self. The dominant concerns in this discourse are that of socializing the individual back into society through the provision of training and treatment. The focus on this discourse is on the individual who is deemed to be psychologically disturbed, socially maladjusted or otherwise out of step with the rest of society in some way. The nature and degree of the deviance were to be ascertained by the new disciplines. The aim of the prison as a state agency was to socialize the individual back into society. Ultiamtely, advocates of rehabilitation believed that this would lead to a reduction in crime and hence to the protection of the society. (Adler 37) The Philippines has its own rehabilitation centers called the RRCY (Regional Rehabilitation Center for Youth). In these centers, children receive vocational training where they are prepared by the staff to be reintegrated into the community when they

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are released. A social worker from the Tanauan RCCY says some of her wards return to the Center years after their release, saying they have found good jobs with the skills they acquired from the Centers vocational training. While CICWL would benefit greatly from rehabilitations such as these, the few centers we have in the Philippines that employ this discourse are definitely not enough to house all CICWL. Some possible reasons for that rehabilitation programs must be of good quality in order to produce favourable results, which means that the government has to spend more money to hire competent counsellors or staff trainers. Adequate staffing and funding is also a problem here, as these might be in short supply. In conclusion, children will not benefit from prison because conditions in the prison are so poor that they are detrimental to the recovery or the rehabilitation of children. The prison system in the Philippines, instead of reforming a child for the better, will put the child at bigger risk of being socialized into a life of crime and violence.

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Works Cited Adler, Michael and Longhurst, Brian. Discourse, Power and Justice. London: Routledge, 1994. Bakker, Jan Willem. The Philippine Justice System. Netherladns: P100M, 1997. Breaking Rules: Children in Conflict with the Law and the Juvenile Justice Process: The Experience in the Philippines. Quezon City: Save the Children UK, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Panopticism. The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. During, Simon. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Hydn, Lars-Christer. The Social Construction of Juvenile Delinquency: Sailing in Hot or Cold Water. 1993. Young. 11 Sep. 2010 <http://logic.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/~b114299/young/1993-4/y934hyde.htm>. Trinidad, Manzano, and Marco Puzon. Behind the Mask: Experiences of Children in Conflict with the Law from Rural and Non-major Urban Areas. Makati City: Plan Philippines, 2006. Yambao, Vincent Pepito F. Jr., ed. Compilation of Legal Materials on the System of Justice for Children. Vol. 1. Manila: UP Institute of Human Rights.