Age for Criminal Liability

As a team for opposition, I don’t believe that lowering of age for criminal responsibility
would lessen the juvenile crime here in Philippines. The government must focus first in
poverty. Poverty is one of the factors that causes a child to do delinquency. Children in
impoverished area are known to do petty crimes like stealing and pickpocketing just to have a
little amount of money to suffice their food in each day. This is a way of survivalist living and
that’s prevalent here in Philippines since we are a country that has a terrible level of poverty.
Poverty must be addressed to mitigate the juvenile crime rate in the country.
Education must be also given to these children. Education must be given to the children
so that they will be instilled the values and norm of the society. Lack of educations the children
to do some horrendous things. If these children are educated, we can perceive that they will be
weighing out the everything that they do.
Proper parenting must be given to the children as well. They must be given care, love
and appreciation for them to feel that they aren’t outcast or just someone who is good for
nothing.
As a person, my own point of view in this issue in relation to the lowering the age for
criminal responsibility is that, it is inhumane and act of violence against these children. The
youth are our hopes. They should be given a chance. Well, they just committed petty crimes
and that’s not a big deal. Children should not be treated as criminals as it would be factor that
would impact them psychologically. Our children are still not mature. Psychologically, the
human’s mental maturity is at the age of 25 so, these children are susceptible to make things
that’s deemed as delinquent because of the reason that they are not mature.
We should focus on other things instead of putting these children behind bars.