Argumentative Essay

Should parents be held responsible for the crimes of their children?

Name

Institution

Even though against parents expectations, it is common that children would engage in criminal activities but of different intensities. While young children are engaged in less serious crimes including physical fights with peer, skipping school, and bullying friends, teenagers are involved in more serious criminal activities such as underage drinking and associated crimes including drunk driving and unprotected sex, abuse of illegal drugs, and vandalism. Further, older adolescents carry out more serious crimes such as breaking to other people’s premises, more serious bullying, murder, and rape. Usually, people under the legal age are considered the responsibility of their parents (National Research Council, ‎Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education & ‎Committee on Law and Justice, 2013). Since they are still developing cognitively, young children are unable to make informed decisions. This explains why they cannot be tried in the same court of law and using the same legal process as adults. It is therefore the responsibility of parents to instill the right values in their children. This way, parents would help children differentiate the right from wrong. Even though parents play a huge role in bringing up their children, they should not be blamed for the crimes committed by their children.

It is notable that assuming the responsibility of their mistakes, parents would be encouraging their children to make mistakes they will never be blamed for. Nonetheless, based on the teaching they get from their parents, they are reasonable and thus aware of the mistakes they are making. When breaking into shops, abusing others, abusing drugs, and committing rape or murder, minors are aware that they are not meeting their parents’ expectations. This is the reason they cannot commit these crimes in the presence of their parents. In fact, when the news reaches their parents, they deny it because they know it is wrong (Solomon, 2012). By hiding their wrong mistakes from their parents, minors are aware that they are making mistakes and thus should be punished.

As explained by Siegel (2014), children should be held responsible for their crimes (and not their parents) in order to learn from these mistakes and change. Once punished, it is expected that in order to avoid a similar punishment in the future, children would change their criminal ways. Additionally, punishing children for their crimes would act as a way of teaching other children to avoid criminal behaviors. Further, punishing parents for children mistakes would only encourage them to commit more crimes and if possible, engage in more serious criminal activities. Punishing children would also be playing the role of the society in which children are helped to grow in the right path. This is because no parent wants children to grow up as criminals.

While children should be blamed for their criminal activities, Siegel (2014) notes that parents should be held responsible for some of their children’s crimes. Some of these are computer crimes, violating curfew, and damaging property. This is because parents have control of their children online activities and need to help them manage their time. This explains why parents should be answerable to the law for crimes committed by children at late hours of the night since they should be in control of their children. Parents should also be answerable when minors engage in cyber bullying or production or viewing of pornographic materials since they are the ones providing these technological devices to their children and failing to control their use.

Even though parents should monitor the ways of their children, this does not mean that they should be punished for the criminal activities of minors. This is because failing to punish minors would encourage them to engage in criminal activities without caring. While parents should control time and use of technological devices by their children, children would still remain responsible for their crimes. This is the reason there are juvenile courts.

References

National Research Council, ‎Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, & ‎Committee on Law and Justice. (2013). Reforming juvenile justice: Developmental approach. Washington: National Academies Press.

Siegel, Nathan. Should Parents be Legally Responsible for Children’s Serious Crimes? 2014. Web. <https://www.npr.org/2014/12/16/371264533/should-parents-be-legally-responsible-for-childrens-serious-crimes>

Solomon, A. (2012). Far from the tree: Parents, children and the search for identity. London: Simon and Schuster.