Hil, Richard --- "Parent blaming and the Littleton High School massacre" [1999] AltLawJl 34; (1999) 24(4) Alternative Law Journal 182

It is simply inappropriate to rush into legislative solutions that punish parents for their children’s criminal acts without ensuring that effective services are readily available to families at all income levels ... to help them to be better parents.[17]

Similar criticisms of parental penalty have also been aired in Britain and Australia. In Britain, for instance, organisations such as the Penal Affairs Consortium, National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, National Association of Probation Officers and the Directors of Social Services have criticised parental penalty on the grounds that it may worsen the plight of many poor and already beleaguered families. It has also been argued that punitive sanctions will do little or nothing to address the complex problems facing families and may indeed lead to increased tensions between parents and their children.[18]

In Australia, organisations such as the Australian Association of Social Workers, the Catholic Prison Ministry and the Church Network for Youth Justice have also pointed to the damaging consequences of parental penalty, including the possibility that this may lead (as a consequence of increased household conflicts) to more cases of homelessness among young people.[19] In Queensland, proposals to make parents liable for up to $5000 restitution in cases of property damage caused by their children have been roundly condemned by a number of key justice organisations on the grounds that this may worsen the financial predicament of many hard-pressed families, thereby generating the conditions that may lead to more (rather than less) offending.

Conclusion

Rather than being a ‘bolt out of the blue’, President Clinton’s call for parents to be held responsible for the crimes of their children is the outcome of an incremental process of parent blaming that has permeated Western systems of crime control over recent years. It is a call founded on highly dubious assumptions about the culpability of parents in their children’s actions and a convenient way of deflecting attention away from wider social issues. To reduce the search for crime to some form of parental failure is merely to eschew the deep problems besetting many aspects of contemporary American life. What is needed in a society where firearms are used directly and indirectly as a conventional means of conflict resolution is some moral commitment to minimising this most lethal of all ‘solutions’.

References

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[1] Hil, R., ‘The Call to Order: Families, Responsibility and Juvenile Crime Control’, (1998) 59 Journal of Aust Studies 101–14.
[2] Pitts, J., The New Politics of Juvenile Justice, Macmillan, 1998; Cunneen, C. and White, R., Juvenile Justice: An Australian Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
[3] Hudson, B., Understanding Justice: An Introduction to Ideas, Perspectives and Controversies in Modern Penal Theory, Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1996; Hogg, R. and Brown, D., Rethinking Law and Order, Pluto Press, 1998.
[4] Carrington, K., Offending Girls: Sex, Youth and Justice, Allen and Unwin, 1993.
[5] Abbott, P. and Wallace, C., The Family and the New Right, Pluto Press, 1992.
[6] Brake, M. and Hale, C., Public Order and Private Lives, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1993.
[7] Cook, D., Crime, Poverty and Disadvantage, Child Poverty Action Group, 1997.
[8] Penal Affairs Consortium, Parents and Juvenile Crime, PAC, 1994.
[9] New Labor, Parenting: A Discussion Paper, New Labor Headquarters, 1996.
[10] Hil, R., Making Them Pay: A Critical Review of Parental Restitution in Australia, Centre for Social and Welfare Research, 1996.
[11] Yea, A., ‘Holding Parents Responsible’, (1997) 5(7) NCLS Legisbrief 11.
[12] National Conference of State Legislatures, Selected Parental Responsibility Enactment Summaries: 1989–1996, NCSL World Wide Web off-print, 1996.
[13] Yea, A., above, p.1.
[14] Collins, C., When Parents Pay for their Children’s Mistakes, State Government News, California, June 1990, p.21.
[15] Collins, C., above, p.34
[16] Collins, C., above.
[17] Davidson, H., ‘No Consequences — Re-Examining Parental Responsibility Laws’, (1996) 7(1) Stanford Law and Policy Review 28.
[18] Cook, D., above.
[19] Hil, R., above, ref. 10, p.15.