Pragmatic Questions About Parental Liability Statutes

• NCJ Number: 175506
• Journal: Wisconsin Law Review Volume: 1996 Issue: 3 Dated: 1996 Pages: 399-445
• Author(s): N R Cahn
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 47 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article focuses on placing juveniles in some of the contexts in which they live, so as to support the argument that juveniles are neither fully responsible adults nor completely dependent children; implications are drawn for the validity of parental liability statutes.

Abstract

The author focuses on two contexts in which juveniles live: families and the larger socioeconomic context. First, the article examines parents' role throughout the juvenile justice system by analyzing statutes that hold parents criminally liable for their child's delinquent acts. The author argues that parental liability statutes are typically unnecessarily punitive and intervene too late with the wrong person. Although the author agrees with the premise underlying parental liability statutes -- that most children live in families and that families have an impact on children -- she disagrees with their method. Parental liability statutes impose class-based expectations on families that do not have the resources to meet those expectations. Although jurisdictions should encourage parents to participate voluntarily in the juvenile justice system, they should not hold parents liable for their child's acts nor mandate parental participation. Instead, putting juvenile delinquency into its larger framework, the second context explored in this article, policymakers should explore alternative methods for respecting the relationships between children and their parents. Solutions should focus on early intervention with both the parent and the child; they should involve collaboration with parents, rather than coercion and conflict. Such solutions range from home- visiting programs to Head Start, as well as including parents at the dispositional stage of juvenile proceedings. Moreover, due to the correlation between poverty and juvenile crime, improvements to the public welfare system may also translate into reduced crime. 208 footnotes