Eliminate DSWD, BJMP red tape to divert kids

Dear Friends and defenders of Children.

The Preda Foundation as part of its international campaign to end the detention of children and youth and their treatment as adult criminals whole heartedly supports the position of the coalition of which it is an active member. It offers an alternative center and values formation-training center for youth in conflict with the law. It is presently asking the Provincial Government of Zambales to make available the use of an abandoned building and 5 hectares of land for conversion to a children’s home and organic farm. Please support this campaign by writing to Governor Vic Magsaysay, Capitol Building, Iba, Zambales, Philippines. and Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Office of the President, Malacanang Palace, Manila. After a week of successfully lobbying in Washington, Every congressman and official approached vowed to support goals the campaign and five congressmen are writing to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to express their concern and urge immediate action.

Fr. Shay Cullen, Alex Corpus Hermoso

Press Statement
Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through Restorative Justice
Atty. Perfecto Caparas

Eliminate DSWD, BJMP red tape to divert kids from adult police jails, Arroyo urged

The statement of Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita vowing to pull out all children languishing with adult crime suspects in cramped city and municipal jails and turn them over to the care of the Department of Social Welfare and Development is welcomed by the Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through Restorative Justice. This attempts to answer the legitimate clamor by all sectors of society for the government to stop this institutionalized crime of lumping up children with adult prisoners, victimizing thousands of children belonging mostly to the poorest of the poor.

In order to weed out this barbarity permanently, we urge the President to de-operationalize the bureaucratic requirement of DSWD and the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology for a court-issued commitment order before admitting children to their custody. Instead, DSWD, and to some extent, BJMP ­ where appropriate facilities for children exist ­ should be ordered by the President to immediately admit children upon their arrest even without such court orders.

This approach would effectively divert and save children from being incarcerated with adult crime suspects in police headquarters, stations, and sub-stations, where they risk getting sodomized, raped, tortured, and tattooed on a national scale.

The usual practice is for the police to lock up children, upon arrest, over extended periods in filthy police cells swarming with adult crime suspects all over the country, save for Cebu City, while awaiting orders from backlog-ridden courts to commit the children to BJMP custody. For its part, however, DSWD generally admits only children with a suspended sentence ­ also by virtue of court orders ­ after having been found guilty by family courts.

This bureaucratic technicality being followed by DSWD and BJMP is the reason cited by law enforcers in routinely condemning children to rot with adult crime suspects in police dungeons. The President should decisively eradicate this ghastly police practice by directing the police to immediately turn over children to DSWD and/or BJMP, and for the latter to admit the children to their custody, without exemption, even in the absence of court orders. By simply casting this DSWD and BJMP bureaucratism into oblivion in favor of the best interests of child prisoners, the President would be able to break this scourge of widespread police child prison abuse once and for all.

For their part, the police and prosecutors could do their investigative and inquest duties after the children’s turnover to DSWD and/or BJMP custody.

The President should also earmark operational budgets for DSWD and BJMP, from the President’s discretionary or intelligence funds, for their child-oriented initiatives and efforts to reintegrate children with society. The corporate community ­ together with other stakeholders ­ could follow suit by bankrolling just and humane alternatives to detention as medium- and long-term strategies to prevent and erect the barrier of non-recurrence of criminal behavior among the young.

Atty. Perfecto Caparas
Convener
Coalition to Stop Child Detention Through Restorative Justice
Email: [email protected]