The print ad came out on Halloween.

A child cowers to a dingy wall, hiding his face under an all-too familiar orange shirt with an imprint of the letter P. The copy reads: “To a child, this is the scariest Halloween costume.”

The ad kicked off this month’s campaign for the early passing of the Philippine Comprehensive Juvenile Justice Bill. UNICEF joins other agencies in the Juvenile Justice Network that are lobbying at the Philippine senate for this bill and stressing that the “jail is no place for a child.”

The campaign was launched on 10 November at the House of Representatives in Quezon City. Activities included an audio-visual exhibit and signing of a manifesto by Philippine legislators. The event was organized by the House Committee on Justice, Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development, and the Juvenile Justice Network-Philippines.

In the Philippines, from 1995 to 2000, a total of 52,576 children “were monitored as having been deprived of their liberty in detention displacement, under custodial setting through suspended sentence,” according to the Second Country Report on the Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child submitted by the government’s Council for the Welfare of Children. The report is an official admission that an average of 10,515 children are being arrested and detained every year. This translates to roughly 28 children every day or more than one child every hour are detained.

But studies show that 80 percent of children in conflict with the law will commit only one offense in their lifetime. Advocates say that there is a high likelihood that first-time offenders can be deterred.

The Juvenile Justice Bill raises the age of criminal responsibility from nine to 12 years old. It explicitly prohibits the detention of children with adults. It calls for offenders of petty or victimless crimes to be redirected from court to diversion programs. Most importantly, it aims to develop a comprehensive juvenile delinquency prevention program.