Should parents pay for the crimes of their kids?
Where does parental responsibility begin and end in juvenile crime? Parents held guilty in America for lives taken by their 15-year-old son raises this thorny question even in India
The news that Jennifer and James Crumbley, parents of 15-year-old Ethan, held guilty of the 2021 killing of four fellow students in Michigan, US, have been convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 10-15 years in prison, is a wake-up call for all of us. Jury trials of the hapless parents held them guilty for deaths caused by their offspring. Their crime? Failing to prevent their son from committing the heinous crime. In a day and age when many parents, even in relatively traditional societies like ours, bemoan the loss of parental ‘control’ over their kids, the growing incidence of juvenile crime is a sad fact of life. But the conviction of an offender’s parents, a first in US history, is a call for parents and kids— and indeed for society at large—to introspect. Where does parental responsibility begin and end in the context of juvenile crime?
Sure, America’s failure on gun control—a big bone of contention between Republicans and Democrats—must share a large part of the blame for such killings. Mass shootings are distressingly frequent in the US. Still, that leaves us with the more disturbing question of parental responsibility. “Parents are not expected to be psychic,” said Judge Cheryl Matthews of the Oakland County Circuit Court in Pontiac, Michigan, before issuing the sentence, “But these convictions are not about poor parenting. These convictions confirm repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train—repeatedly ignoring things that would make a reasonable person feel the hair on the back of her neck stand up.” One may not agree with an anguished parent of one of the victims that “the tragedy was completely preventable.” Yet, as the Crumbleys’ trial showed, there was enough evidence that they seemed to have not only ignored worrying signs of their son’s mental distress, but worse, did not take care to ensure dangerous weapons were kept out of his reach. We in India are better off in this respect; access to guns is not easy. Consequently, such heinous crimes by juveniles are rare. However, as the growing number of cases of under-age and sometimes fatally reckless driving shows, there is a societal cost to kidglove treatment of minors. Just last week, the horrific case was reported of a Class 8 student in Delhi who suffered intestinal injury in school after a group of classmates allegedly tortured him sexually with a stick. According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s Crime in India 2021 report, 31,710 crimes involving minors were filed in 2021, a jump of 4.7% from the previous year. Under Indian law, anyone under 18 years of age is regarded as a ‘minor.’ The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, and related 2021 amendment allows juveniles in the 16-18 age bracket to be tried as adults in cases of heinous violations of law. But only after a preliminary hearing by the relevant Juvenile Justice Board. Also, under Indian law, no child can be sentenced to life imprisonment for any crime without the prospect of release, or to death. In the Michigan case, the offender was tried as an adult and sentenced to life behind bars without parole.
India’s law is silent on parental culpability. But as we wrestle with an increasingly violent world, where parents often have less influence over their kids than social media, for instance, maybe it is time for us to examine the difficult question of parental responsibility: Where does it begin—and end—in the context of juvenile crime? There are no easy answers.