Parental Responsibility Laws

Parental responsibility laws are, in general, statutes that deal with issues regarding the responsibility of parents for the deviant activity of their children. Statutes that address parental responsibility range from status offenses, such as truancy, to violent felony offenses. The statutes vary widely and address a variety of issues, including parental liability for failing to adequately supervise children (especially during curfews), lack of parental participation in a child's postadjudication rehabilitation, parental responsibility for property damage and/or injury caused by a child's acts, and parental liability for the costs of a child's rehabilitation or treatment program (for further elaboration, see Lansing, 1999).

Although parental responsibility laws have typically addressed the issues just noted, contemporary discussions have broadened the relevant issues to include a more comprehensive, and ever expanding, view of parental responsibilities. For example, some parental responsibility laws have been so broadly worded that they can be interpreted in ways that would include such factors as the psychological effects that a student had on other students due to their actions or threats. This factor has only recently been acknowledged by individuals who have been direct, or even indirect, victims of mass murders by students at schools, such as the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

In addition, the state of California in 1996 implemented the Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act (called the STEP Act), which permits the arrest of parents whose child becomes a suspect in a crime and who consciously fail to control or supervise their child. Although such far-reaching cases of holding parents responsible are still somewhat rare, the use of these laws is growing rapidly due to strong public demand in a time of relatively conservative views regarding crime and crime control.

[Page 282]Legal scholars have argued that these laws result in parents being unjustly punished for the acts of their children. In spite of this, empirical studies and public opinion polls have shown that the public generally believes that parents are largely responsible for the behavior of their children. Consequently, most citizens strongly support the creation and enforcement of parental responsibility laws.