Three students are gone. Seven others are wounded. Two kids pulled guns inside a school in Tacloban on June 22, and the response has been immediate, predictable, and understandable: fury. The families of the victims want justice. Everyone wants accountability. Everyone wants consequences. That’s not negotiable. 

But here’s the thing that keeps getting lost in the outrage: “accountability” and “prison” are not the same word, and “justice” has never meant only one thing. We have a visceral, immediate understanding of what punishment looks like: time served, doors locked, freedom removed. Vengeance wears that shape. But justice is more complicated.

It demands both reckoning and repair. And when the person who caused the harm is not yet fully formed, when their brain is still building the machinery that stops impulsive behavior before it becomes a tragedy, the question isn’t whether they should face consequences. It’s which consequences actually work and which can do more good than harm.

So if we’re going to have an actual debate about this, let’s debate the facts. And the facts are:

8. The biggest lie: “The Juvenile Justice Law means no consequences”

Children 15 years of age or below at the time of the offense are exempt from criminal liability. However, they are subjected to an intervention program. That word, “exempt,” has been twisted into “walks free.” It doesn’t mean that.

It means they don’t go through the criminal court system. They go through a different system, one that includes social worker assessment, structured programs, possible placement in a youth care facility called Bahay Pag-asa (a 24-hour residential facility with restrictions on physical mobility), and yes, civil liability: families of victims can still sue.

Senator Kiko Pangilinan, the law’s author, was explicit after Tacloban: “They cannot simply be released even if they are minors. They must go through the process prescribed by law.” 

The outrage is understandable. The misinformation is not. 

7. Accountability and justice are not the same word

Most of us have a single mental image of justice: jail time, doors locked, freedom removed. That’s one kind. Retributive justice, where the consequence is punishment proportional to the harm. But there’s another kind, one the law recognizes: restorative justice, where the focus is on repairing harm and preventing the next tragedy.

Both demand accountability. Only one is designed to stop dead kids from piling up. The question isn’t whether minors should face consequences. The question is which consequences actually work. Because while “common sense” dictates it should go a certain way, historical data, aka the facts, absolutely tell a different story.

6. Your brain isn’t finished being built at 14

Neuroscience research shows that the prefrontal lobe of the adolescent brain (responsible for impulse control and rational decision-making) is not yet fully mature, whereas the limbic system, responsible for emotional responses, is highly active, which makes minors more likely to make impulsive decisions. 

A 14-year-old can know something is wrong and still lack the neurological capacity to stop themselves from doing it under stress. This isn’t a philosophical position.

This is a scientific fact. Courts internationally have begun incorporating this into culpability frameworks because it changes the equation. The law accounts for it. Your instinct to throw them in jail doesn’t.

5. The US tried “tough on crime” for 30 years. Whoops, it didn’t work

The past tells us this “tough-on-crime” approach will predictably fuel mass incarceration and increase recidivism (aka people who end up committing crimes again and go back to prison), wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on efforts that disproportionately damage low-income communities of color and ultimately harm long-term public safety. 

Meanwhile, countries that invested in rehabilitation instead of punishment saw radically different outcomes. Per capita, Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates globally; in 2018, the reconviction rate was 18 percent within two years of release and 25 percent after five years. The average reoffending rate for all Scandinavian countries is around 27%.

The US? Over two-thirds of released prisoners return to the criminal justice system within two years. We know which system works. We’re just still fighting about it because it feels wrong that helping criminals become better people works better in general than making them suffer.

4. Here’s what RA 9344 actually mandates for serious crimes

For children 15 and below: release to parents/guardians or referral to Bahay Pag-asa (if “best interest of child requires”), supervised intervention programs, civil liability remains (families can sue).

For children 15-18: same process unless the prosecution can prove discernment, meaning the court has to assess whether they understood what they were doing and its consequences. 

The determination isn’t casual; courts must consider the gruesome nature of the crime, the minor’s behavior before/during/after, whether they tried to silence witnesses, and how they disposed of evidence.

This is rigorous. It’s just not prison. And again, we already know why it can’t just be the same for kids in the first place.

3. So why is Senator Robin Padilla pushing to lower the age to 10?

Because vengeance feels justified, and evidence feels slow. Senator Robin Padilla urged fellow senators to amend the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act and lower the age of criminal liability to 10 years old. 

But we’ve already tried this playbook: the death penalty for minors, life sentences without parole, trying children as adults, mandatory minimums, three-strikes laws.

History has shown us conclusively that none of it worked. All of it produced more recidivism, more trauma, more broken reentry, more victims. Trying children as adults again will only repeat those failures at scale. 

SB 372 doesn’t address overcrowding in Bahay Pag-asa, doesn’t fund more social workers, doesn’t fix the implementation gaps that are the actual problem. It just guarantees more children in a system that research shows makes them more dangerous, following a playbook we already know has failed before and, by all indications, will likely fail again: the textbook definition of insanity.

2. The real problem with RA 9344 isn’t that it’s too soft. It’s underfunded

Not every province has a Bahay Pag-asa. Social workers are overwhelmed. The law’s promise and its reality are different things. Delays in diversion due to a lack of trained personnel, disparities in urban vs. rural implementation.

These are real, fixable problems that have nothing to do with lowering the age threshold and everything to do with actually paying for the system to work. 

Is it worth paying for? If a juvenile delinquent can grow up to be a good and productive citizen instead of just another wretch of society that our taxes will pay for, only to very likely reoffend once they’re let out, isn’t that worth it?

Take away your feelings, and consider the facts. Because guess what? Facts don’t care about your feelings.

1. Choosing punishment over repair means choosing to create the next tragedy

A system that locks up children and stamps them as criminals produces exactly the outcomes everyone fears: more reoffending, more victims, more funerals. Justice isn’t vengeance in a better suit. It’s a hard choice to break the cycle rather than perpetuate it. 

The families in Tacloban deserve better. So does the next kid who’s about to make a catastrophic mistake. At the moment, those two things might seem at odds with each other, and that’s exactly why we need some perspective here.

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