Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
Parents? That’s what the City Council of Davenport, Iowa thought. They passed a law requiring parents to exercise control over their minor children. The law said that if a child has two or more episodes of delinquency (resulting in a complaint filed in court), there will be a “presumption” that the parent violated his or her duty. The presumption is “rebuttable” as we say in the law, but the burden of proof lies with the parent.
The Iowa Supreme Court has struck down that part of the law that creates a rebuttable presumption against parents. According to the Court, it is “arbitrary and irrational” for the law to presume that a parent is failing to control his/her child just because the child has two or more delinquency citations. Thus, the Court held that the law violates the 14th Amendment due process rights of parents.
What do you think? Under the law of vicarious liability, employers are generally liable for negligent acts committed by their employees. Why not something similar for parents? Or is this unfair given the ability of teenagers to evade even the most vigilant parents?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
How about varying degrees of responsibility? A ten-year-old that's been pinched twice for shoplifting or vandalism is different than the same acts performed by teenager with car keys. One assumes that the former would get more supervision than the latter.
May '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
What are the parents supposed to do if their child is a delinquent? The law and social service agencies have so undercut parental authority that anything a parent does, including doing nothing, can get the parent in trouble for "child abuse."
Aug '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
Employers get to choose their employees from a pool of appliants. Parents do not get to choose their children (yet).
(Most) employers are allowed to fire a delinquent employee. Parents cannot really fire their children.
Rather than punishing parents without proof of any actual wrong-doing, courts should hand down REAL punishments to young offenders instead of simply making the youth justice system a "school for criminality".
Aug '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
Clearly, the message being sent is, "don't have kids".
Aug '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
In the case of employers, employees are constantly acting as agents for the employer. As a legal member of a company, they are acting formal representatives of the company. This provides them with certain benefits that the public at large is restricted from, such as the ability to touch the corporation's cash and make sales decisions. It also comes with additional burdens and responsibilities for both the employer and the employee.
Employers are have the ability to enter this contract with someone they have formally examined as a worthy member of the contract. They have formally evaluated the person and when they hire them acknowledge that they want this person to represent them in some manner.
Children, on the other hand, are not interviewed before conception and the nature/nurture question has not been completely answered. Parents have an obligation to society to raise their children within the confines of the Social Contract, but they also have a right to raise their children as they see fit. Their failure of the Social Contract only extends to their direct actions. The minor needs to be held responsible for the direct actions of the minor. No inverse corruption of blood please.
Aug '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
An inevitable result of the single mother syndrome combined with the complete blanket of entitlements, that neglected to tell those single moms that the state really couldn't bring up their kids for them as well.
Might as well tell them now, if they don't get things under control, they'll be posting bail sooner than they think. And if they think dropout is a problem, wait until they see what probation/parole do to job opportunities.
So the future status of the vast numbers of the "wards of the state" will be farmed out of the justice or the correctional establishments. It will be a wholly different situation, different needs, responses, and the cost ?
Don't even start to calculate how much it will cost to maintain control over a sea of jobless, criminally-trained, young people with no sense of the social contract and no respect for any authority.
What could go wrong ?
Oct '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
But only while acting in their capacity as employees, if I understand the general legal principle correctly. It's not a blanket liability for any and all negligent acts committed by an employee.
With parents and children, it seems proper that parents be held responsible for acts committed by their children when the children are acting with authority or direction provided by the parents. Beyond that, it would be hard to pin the blame on parents for their children's behavior.
We've all seen good kids raised by bad parents and bad kids raised by good parents. Liability and punishment for behavior needs to be applied to the perpetrators, which includes the parents if they contributed to the behavior in a substantive way and doesn't include them if they didn't.
Nov '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
If any area of human activity continues to successfully evade legislative control, it may be child rearing. Occasionally someone in a position of authority has an experience that brings their frustration with this evasion to a head, and we see a murky attempt, like the Davenport law, to make the guilty pay. I don't want to sound too harsh here, since I've experienced that visceral desire to see a bad parent punished.
The Iowa Supreme Court made the proper decision, recognizing that the guilt doesn't lie with the parents often enough to make it presumable. I've had the opportunity to witness judges wrangle with tough legal issues behind closed doors, and can guarantee you that at some point one of Iowa's finest legal minds said something like, "What the hell, have any of these people ever raised a kid?"
As imperfect as it is, the civil court system remains the proper place to determine a parent's culpability in the bad actions of their children.
And yes, it usually is the parents' fault.
Oct '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
The purpose of this law is to require parents to surrender an errant child to the appropriate welfare authorities following the child’s first offense. There is no other way to avoid criminal liability.
Oct '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
Parents in Louisiana are civilly liable for the acts of their minor children. I haven't run into too many people who think this is unjust.
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
All: I confess: the analogy with vicarious liability is not a perfect fit. it's true that a parent cannot choose his/her children. But on the other hand - unlike vicarious liability - the parental responsibilty law is not "strict liability," ie, the parent is not automatically found guilty just becuase the child has violations. The creation of a "rebuttable presumption" is about shifting the burden of proof. The parent can still demonstrate that he is a responsible parent, but he will bear the burden of proof.
Aug '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
I'm not sure I like the sound of parents -- even of delinquents -- having to bear the burden of proving responsibility. I'd still prefer the accuser to bear the burden of proving parental irresponsibility.
My own parents weren't the best parents in the world, but I wouldn't call them abusive or negligent -- far from it. Still, if I had gone delinquent and my parent did have to prove their fitness in court (rather than have their unfitness proved to them) who knows what would have been concluded?
It's barbaric to have to go through life knowing you might have to prove your innocence at any time. (Even God doesn't demand that of us.) Gosh, isn't that one of the problems with the TSA?
A guy with baggy clothes to accommodate his urostomy supplies gets singled out for bagginess and then has to prove that his urostomy bag isn't some mysterious terrorist appliance, but an innocent, delicate medical device...
Jul '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
As one who has spent a career spanning 40 years dealing with delinquent kids and their parents I can truly say that it is the society that fails when these kids remain a problem. Admittedly, parents can prevent a lot of the behaviors when kids are young, but once a kid hits twelve to thirteen there is little parents are able to do without the active assistance of the society in general.
The problems are often organic. I have worked with two different children from the same family. Both raised in the same environment with the same rules and enforcement. One became a productive member of society the other died in a drug deal gone bad in a Seattle parking lot. Ten or twelve years before when he was my student I could easily have predicted that would be his end.
Far more often kids from single parent households get out of control at an early age. Parents are intimidated by CPS and other agencies. Courts do nothing when kids are truant or violent. It takes more than 20 car thefts before a kid is incarcerated in Seattle, and then only for a day or so. Who is wrong?
Nov '10
Re: Who’s Responsible for Delinquent Children?
Midget Faded Rattlesnake
I'm not sure I like the sound of parents -- even of delinquents -- having to bear the burden of proving responsibility. I'd still prefer the accuser to bear the burden of proving parental irresponsibility.
Nov 22 at 1:17pm
This is the problem in a nutshell. There's nothing inherently wrong with trying to hold parents responsible for the actions of their children, but the presumption of innocence is not only Constitutionally protected, but an inalienable natural right.
The idea behind the law is valid, but the court was right to strike down the specific wording. "Guilty until proven innocent" is always unconstitutional.