Personal Statement on Lowering The Age of Responsibility

“The youth is the hope of our fatherland.” This may give a common impact on the public given that it was our national hero, Jose Rizal, who stated this. This gives us a message that the youth of this country should be nurtured and well taken care of. In order to yield productive youth, the nurturing should start from the children. In our generation, we cannot deny the fact that there are many factors that affect the productivity of humanity especially on children that are still vulnerable. Our country has faced and will be facing a lot of knots in the following years and we know that.

I believe that persons thirteen years old and above are already mature and responsible enough of their acts. At this age, not only the physical traits are changed but also the person’s emotional and mental traits. Early adolescence stage starts at this age. According to www.commonsensemedia.org, teens are now capable of handling social issues like poverty, crime and wealth. However they still struggle on figuring out their choices and how ethical would that be in the eyes of society. From the website “ww2.ed.gov”, children need to touch and see in order for them to identify and confirm if something is real. However, a teenager at his/her early adolescence stage now knows and thinks about ideas which can’t be seen and touched and are now able to think about the consequences of what might be if he/she does a certain act.

My second point is that it can contribute for the betterment of the country. According to www.wheninmanila.com, politicians in the country supports the amendment of the juvenile justice law by comparing it to other countries who have a low criminal age liability. Example is United Kingdom from the age of eight and Singapore at age seven. This could be one factor why these countries are progressive because by doing this, they have taught the citizens to be socially responsible and to avoid doing crimes whether big or small. These teenagers are also prone to violence because of the video games they played and advertisements watched from the internet. They involve themselves in certain crimes, some even commit suicide, smoking and bullying. Others may say that because they won’t be put to jail but t o rehabilitation centers, they may just take it for granted and would not realize the weight of their acts.   

Overall, many people are saying that children and teens or minors contribute to a huge number of crimes and lawlessness in the country. How can we ascend our country bearing the vision of Jose Rizal if we would just tolerate these acts done by them? I do agree with the amendment that the age of criminal liability should be lowered to thirteen.