Juvenile detention centers

IN THEORY, jails are for minor offenders with short sentences, and prisons are f or major offenders with long sentences.

Jails are usually run by local government, and prisons are run by the national government.

But these definitions are almost always not exact, and the differences often get blurred here and there. More often than not, arrested suspects who are still waiting for hearings or sentencings are also placed in the jails, and they are usually mixed in with those who are already sentenced and are already convicted.

There seems to be no problem with that if we are talking about adult inmates, but there are really big problems when we are talking about juvenile offenders.

Also in theory, those who are still awaiting sentencing are really just detainees and are therefore not prisoners, strictly speaking that is.

That could not be truer in the case of juveniles, who are technically just detainees, and are not prisoners. But the problem is, these juveniles are always mixed in with the adult detainees.

While the obvious solution is to put up separate detention centers for the juveniles, what is really needed is a wholistic solution that should involve a complete ecosystem, and not just the simplistic putting up of physical buildings.

For one, the mental health of these young people may already be a problem, and that is why the suicide rate among them is very high. Who should lead these wholistic efforts? Perhaps the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG)? Or the Department of Health (DOH)? Or the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)?

WHO IS MONITORING THE MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEM?

Who is monitoring the mental health problem in the Philippines?

I know it is the DOH, but which unit of the DOH? And where are they posting their reports?

Of course, it is one thing to monitor a problem, it is another thing to report it. Besides, what good are their accomplishments if they are not telling us about it?

The recent incident involving suicide in a Metro Manila mall has again brought attention to the issue of mental health in our country. No one is calling it an epidemic yet, but it seems that the numbers are significant enough for the government to pay more attention to this problem.

To me, this looks like a cause-andeffect problem. Most possibly, suicide is caused by a mental health problem, if that is not too obvious yet.

At the risk of generalizing too much, I would even say that the mental health problem is the effect of the illegal drugs problem, as if we do not know that yet.

Of course, there could be other causes of mental problem, but it would not be wrong to say that somehow, the illegal drugs problem always gets into the equation here and there. That is why I always say that drug addiction should be treated as a health problem, speci f i ca l l y a mental health problem.

At the risk of being accused of making too sweeping accusations, I would even say that poverty, or the conditions brought about by poverty could also result in mental health problems./