It is ironic and lamentable that as the world celebrates Universal Children’s Day with the theme “Stop Violence Against Children”, the House of Representatives is conducting its second day hearing on proposed measures that seek to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility (MACR) from 15 to nine years old. These bills will potentially inflict untold violence upon Filipino children.

Like the restoration of the death penalty, the lowering of the MACR is a veneer to conceal a flawed and ineffective criminal justice system. That criminal syndicates or criminal parents use children to transgress the law shows that these adult offenders are emboldened to commit crimes as they do not fear apprehension, or if caught the moneyed can buy their freedom even as the poor contemplate a successful escape.

What deters crime is the certainty of arrest, speedy prosecution, and warranted conviction and service of sentence of the guilty.

During the first hearing of the MACR bills in the House of Representatives last week, none of the resource persons invited by the Committee on Justice endorsed the said bills. The reasons cited by the experts for opposing the lowering of the MACR are worth reiterating. The following are just a few:

• The Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body that monitors the implementation of the CRC, urges States parties not to lower their MACR to the age of 12 and further recommends the age of 16.

• Lowering the MACR to nine years old contradicts what science shows about the development of children. The prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, prediction of outcomes, and the ability to suppress urges - is the last to develop in humans. Among children, the prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped. Additionally, research shows that among Filipino children, the average age of discernment is 15 years old.

• It is anti-poor. Children in conflict with the law (CICL) are generally those who are impoverished. They are already victims of poverty and treating them as criminals is re-victimizing them by subjecting them to dehumanizing trauma.

• Mixing CICL with older prisoners jeopardizes the children’s rehabilitation and efforts to provide proper intervention.

• Detention centers in the country are not up to minimum standards and are detrimental to children. CICL have to be protected rather than detained.

Verily, the MACR bills run counter to the fundamental principles of child welfare and protection.

There are far better solutions to the problems these proposed measures seek to address, foremost of which is ensuring the full and strict implementation of Republic Act No. 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006.

It is important to underscore that R.A. 9344 was nominated in the Future Policy Award 2015, which is dedicated to recognizing the world’s best laws and policies to secure children’s rights.

There are two ways of properly celebrating Universal Children’s Day and the spirit of this year’s theme aimed at stopping violence against children: The first is to take immediate and concrete steps so that R.A. 9344 is implemented fully and strictly. The second is to ensure that the MACR bills will never see the light of day.

EDCEL C. LAGMAN