NCJ Number
181060
Journal
New York University Law Review Volume: 73 Issue: 2 Dated: May 1998 Pages: 667-699
Editor(s)
Jonathan Pickhardt
Date Published
1998
Length
33 pages
Annotation
This legal note analyzes recently enacted parental responsibility laws by evaluating them as a penologically post-modern phenomenon.
Abstract
Parental responsibility laws are a post-modern phenomenon for several reasons. They reflect a rationale of risk management, view juveniles as a dangerous population that requires parental management, normalize crime by expanding the boundary of policing into the family context, and represent examples of symbolic law-making. The post-modern influence in this context is problematic because of the way it reconceptualizes the family and the child. Family autonomy is limited by the laws, and the image of the child is changed from one of a vulnerable individual who requires the protection of the state and is owed a duty of care by the parent to the image of the child as a danger to society. In the latter image, parental duty is in the form of a mandate to protect society from the danger presented by the child. Ways in which parental responsibility laws reorient views of the family and the child have largely been ignored. Like other post-modern penal strategies, however, the laws may enjoy great longevity because of their potential to command bipartisan support. While commentators on the right may view them as an effective means of juvenile crime control, some on the left may see them as a shelter against increasing juvenile punishment. The author concludes that the "new penology" embodied in parental responsibility laws does not effectively deal with juvenile crime. 199 footnotes