Second chance

Last Monday’s violence in which minor offenders stood up to their jailers and detained one of them inside a toilet at Operation Second Chance in barangay Kalunasan, Cebu City broke open the dismal state of that facility’s management and operations.

If the underage inmates are to be believed, they’ve been subjected to periodic beatings by their adult jailers, a lot of whom are oriented towards dealing with hardened criminals in the nearby Cebu City Jail.

It is precisely these beatings that have alarmed the center’s board, among them Councilor Margot Osmeña, who was a moving force behind building the center years ago to keep child offenders in separate quarters from adult detainees of the Cebu City Jail.

Operation Second Chance was her pet project, an offshoot of her advocacy for street children, for which she leaned on friends, contractors and government connections to set up a child-friendly detention facility that’s the first of its kind in Cebu and the rest of the country.

In the operation manual of OSC, she said, it specfies that house parents and not prison guards were to have direct contact in dealing with the minor offenders.

Last Monday’s commotion showed the guards know zero about that handbook. The hostage-taking incident was a symptom of an inner turmoil.

Osmeña said she believes things were smooth sailing before a change of leadership in the center.

The new center warden Elsie Eireen Alcomendras didn’t see any of the beatings the youths complained of. That’s worrying to know.

It took Monday’s violence (one guard suffered a fracture and bruises when the boys ganged up on him) for Alcomendras and other jail officials to pay attention and listen harder.

With over 100 youth offenders at stake, the center’s mission of intervention – firm, but compassionate, expert guidance and rehabilitation – becomes all the more crucial to keep them off the path of adult criminal behaviour.

Pulling out the guards and replacing them with well-trained civilian custodians and house parents was the first step.

An ongoing inquiry should shed light on what really went wrong in Operation Second Chance, sparing no one, not even the young wards who live behind bars.

From its name alone, the center aspires to give youngsters who have run afoul of the law a genuine chance, real hope for change.

After Monday’s brief uprising, there should be no repeat of that failure of stewardship.