By: Atty. Gregorio B. Austral, CPA
A law of second chances: The JJWA’s promise and peril
There are laws that punish, and there are laws that attempt to understand before they punish. The Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, Republic Act No. 9344, belongs to the latter kind. It is one of the clearest declarations in our statute books that a child in conflict with the law is not to be treated, at once and without qualification, as a hardened adult criminal. At its core, the JJWA is anchored on the best interests of the child, restorative justice, rehabilitation, and reintegration. This is not sentimentality written into law. It is policy.
The Supreme Court recognized this mandate in Hubilla v. People, G.R. No. 176102, November 26, 2014, where it described RA 9344 as a law meant to protect the best interest of the child in conflict with the law and to apply restorative justice in policies and programs affecting such children. But the same case is also a necessary reminder against loose public talk: the JJWA is not a magic eraser. It does not make accountability disappear.
The law’s strongest virtue is plain. By setting the minimum age of criminal responsibility at below 15 years of age, and by treating children 15 but below 18 differently depending on discernment, the law gives young offenders a real chance to be corrected before the criminal justice system swallows them whole. A child below 15 is exempt from criminal liability, though not from intervention. A child above 15 but below 18 is likewise exempt unless he or she acted with discernment. This distinction matters, because it shows that the law is not blind to responsibility; it simply asks first whether the child had the capacity to understand the wrongfulness and consequences of the act.
In proper cases, the JJWA also requires diversion, intervention, and child-sensitive handling. Section 23 of RA 9344 directs the conduct of diversion proceedings where the imposable penalty is not more than six years of imprisonment, while Section 24 recognizes the different levels at which diversion programs may be undertaken. These are not loopholes. They are tools. Used properly, they can repair harm, involve families and communities, and keep a child from graduating from a minor offense into a lifetime of criminality.
But the critics are not entirely without reason. Public frustration usually comes from cases where the offense is serious, repeated, or apparently committed with full awareness. People ask, understandably, whether mercy has become permission. Hubilla is instructive here. The Court was clear that imprisonment of a child in conflict with the law is not prohibited by RA 9344; when warranted, it may still be imposed, subject to the restrictions that it must be a disposition of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time. The Court also noted that suspension of sentence is limited by age, and that probation cannot be made available by artificially reducing the penalty beyond what the law allows.
That is why the common claim that the JJWA lets minors “get away with crime” is, at best, incomplete. The law exempts certain children from criminal liability because of age or lack of discernment, but it does not exempt them from intervention. It allows diversion where appropriate, but not as a reward for wrongdoing. It prefers rehabilitation, but it does not forbid accountability. In serious cases, and where the law so permits, consequences remain real.
The deeper problem, as usual, is implementation. Diversion programs do not run on good intentions. They require trained social workers, functioning barangay mechanisms, credible family conferencing, proper facilities, and courts and law enforcement officers who understand child-sensitive procedure. Without these, the law’s humane design can collapse into either neglect or impunity. The JJWA’s promise is that a child can still be redirected before he becomes permanently lost to crime. Its peril is that, when institutions fail, the public begins to see compassion as weakness and due process as escape. The better challenge is not whether to abandon the JJWA, but whether we have the discipline to make it work as intended: firm enough to hold a child accountable, fair enough to protect his rights, and restorative enough to give him a second chance that is not empty rhetoric.