Should Parents Be Held Responsible for Children's Crimes?

Interesting: http://www.thelocal.se/24924/20100211/

I was doing some research for my latest book on laws that hold parents responsible for the crimes of their minor children.

Sweden recently passed a law that will hold parents financially responsible. I think this is a no-brainer.

If my child sends a baseball through your bedroom window, I will replace your window.

If my child accidentally breaks your DVD player, I will buy you a new one.

If my child tramples your flowers, I will plant you new ones.

Isn't that what responsible parents do? And for those not-so-responsible parents, if your child causes significant damage to my property (intentionally or not), and you won't pony up, I'll be seeing you in small claims court.

It's sad that we need so many laws just to get people to do the right thing. But I guess that's the whole point of law. The sticky part comes in when people can't agree on what the right thing is.

Not many people would disagree with me on the window, the DVD player, or the flowers. But what if your 16-year-old sneaks out, gets drunk, and crashes his car into a store? Are you responsible for the damages to the store, the medical bills of those injured? As the child gets older and the financial costs incurred rise, people are more and more divided on the issue of holding parents responsible.

In Sweden, before this law was passed, minor children incurred the costs of their actions/crimes themselves - when they turned 18, the bills came due. They were finding, however, that many youths were starting their adulthood in financial holes that they couldn't possibly dig themselves out of. The solution was to drop parents in the hole instead.

I'm with Sweden on this - parents should be held responsible. Yes, children make mistakes. Yes, good parents can have bad children. BUT, most of the time, wayward children are the result of negligent, lazy, apathetic, or just plain bad parents. I have no problem with giving parents a reason to be more on top of their kids.

This will probably bite me in the ass someday - I'm far from a perfect parent. But if I have to shell out thousands of dollars for something my kids do, I'll suck it up and pay. That's what I signed on to do when I decided to have children. I signed on to be their parent.