OUR page 1 story yesterday should worry everybody as much as it does Philippine National Police spokesman, Chief Superintendent Generoso Cerbo Jr.

It tells of the almost 300 percent increase in the number of crimes committed by child offenders.

Chief Supt. Cerbo finds “the increase in [criminal] incidents involving children as suspects in cases of rape, theft and robbery…very alarming.”

In an interview with our correspondent Anthony Vargas, the PNP spokesman attributed the ever-increasing number of child offenders to several factors like the growing population and criminal syndicates who use children in their illicit operations.

But we believe the growing population should not be a problem if only the police strength and capabilities also increased proportionately. There is a standard policemen-to-population ratio that results in low-crime incidence.

Even so, if the criminal act is rape committed in the privacy of a household—because the child-rapist is a relative of the child-victim, how can the visibility of policemen patrolling the street for thieves and drug addicts help?

More policemen seen being alert and eager to catch criminals do effectively deter snatchers and children used by syndicates. These are the one who enter traffic grid-locked taxis to divest passengers of their jewelry and purses.

Figures from the Philippine National Police Women’s and Children’s Protection Center (WCPC) reveal that in 2007, there were 1,825 children in conflict with the law. The number ballooned to 5,318 cases in 2011— a 290 percent increase or almost three times.

Particularly worrying to the PNP spokesman is the rise in the number of children who commit rape, a crime punishable by life imprisonment if the perpetrator is an adult. In 2007, police records reveal, 201 rape cases were committed by children. Then it rose slightly to 208 in 2008, and rose more worrisomely to 238 in 2009; to 312 in 2010 and to 323 last year in 2011.

Theft and robbery, sexual abuse and physical injuries are the most common crimes committed by children.

Under the law, a child aged 15 and below at the commission of the crime is exempt from criminal liability. The child offender is, however, made to undergo an intervention program, which may include counseling.

Under Republic Act 9344, an act establishing a comprehensive juvenile justice and welfare system, a child above 15 years but below 18 years of age is also exempt from criminal liability and subjected to an intervention program. But the above-15 and below-18 child offender may be treated like a liable adult if it is proved that he or she “acted with discernment.”

The House of Representatives has passed a measure that seeks to lower the age of criminal liability from 15 to 12 but the Senate has not passed its version of the bill. And it doesn’t look like it will. Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago strongly opposes the proposal. And so does Sen. Kiko Pangilinan, the author of the current law that requires the state to develop a Juvenile Justice System different and separate from the criminal justice system for adults.

Senator Pangilinan has explained satisfactorily that under his law child offenders will not be made to go scot-free as they are now nor will they be jailed with adult offenders. The law envisions a correctly established rehabilitation and correctional system appropriate for children.

Unfortunately, the government cannot implement this enlightened law for lack of funds.

So, notwithstanding the existence of the good law, wrong moves are made. A strict law-enforcement minded police officer would just decide — for the public good — to violate the law. He would throw a young offender (whose crime is an inconsequential theft) inside a jail with adults and hardened criminals. Or a compassionate cop, seeing that he could not possibly obey the law because there is no Juvenile Crime Facility to put the young offender in, will just turn the child over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

But the DSWD doesn’t have the proper facilities either. In the end, usually in just a matter of hours or a day after the child offender is caught, the social workers would have to let the young thief go.

In a more civilized society this is unacceptable. But in our country that still has to really become a rich “tiger economy” we Filipinos would have to endure the risks of having so many “children in conflict with the law” lurking in street corners waiting for a chance to pounce on us.