Is it time the parents were punished as well when their teenagers murder people.

[dottypotter]

A youth has been found guilty today of stabbing a 53 year old man outside a supermarket in Redditch. Ian Kirwin.
The teenage gang had gone out looking for trouble and stabbed this man after he challenged them about their bad behaviour in a supermarket toilet where they had urinated on the floor and banged loudly on his cubicle door.
When is this thuggish and horrible behaviour going to end?

Isn't it time the parents of these feral teenagers were held to account now?
How can it be nothing to do with them when their offspring are out with knives?
Does anything ever happen to parents of these teenagers?
What happens to other children they may have are they taken away from them?

Aren't they bloody embarrassed that they have raised little shits?
Boils my piss. Nothing ever changes.
You can't even name the teenagers, everything's on the yobbos side?
Isn't it time we asked about the parents and held them partly responsible.
How will it change otherwise?

Most of these parents are going spare themselves trying to do something already - often the damage has been done through domestic abuse, neglect, mental health or substance misuse (parents that is) and they are trying their best to repair the damage but don’t know how in a system where support has been cut by the conservative government.

Basically the issue is a lot bigger than blame the parents.

I know a parent of a young man who stabbed someone to death, and this person had done everything you can imagine to put him on the right path and stop him being so angry with just about everything.

Some people are just born wrong, and no matter how much you try, you cant change them.

Sure some parents are to blame, but not all of them

By the time it gets to this I doubt they have a relationship with their parents.

Yeah.

But only if local authorities could be prosecuted in all cases where parents had been desperately pleading for help from all manner of services for years and were turned away repeatedly and left to try to manage alone.

The parents are probably suffering enough at this point.

No.

Absolutely agree with you OP. There are far too many feral teenagers around whose parents simply do not care what they are up to.

YABU!

Children who are inadequately parented should receive the attention of the authorities way before the age of 15

The children have likely been let down by the system and their parents

Nope a very lovely friend of mine has a teen who has gone badly off the rails, she has tried her utmost to help him and it's all been thrown back in her face. She nearly had a nervous breakdown over it all.

It really isn't as black and white as 'shit parents = shit teens' ... there's often a whole host of other factors.

or even 'shit teens = shit parents'

Until its nice white middle class parents, eh.

Yes. They should be held to account to some degree. If they are responsible for their under 18 child.

However they've probably been begging SS for assistance and had involvement with police once it's gone as far as serious crime. But they should be investigated.

No. What a ridiculous idea. There are so many factors at play with gangs. But given you feel you are able to solve gang violence, do let the authorities know, they’d be grateful I’m sure.

It's not like a dog. You can't lock up a teenager or get them put down if they bite someone and get violent. What is it you propose parents do. We raise kids to be independent people with their own minds.

I think an increase in free outlets for teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds would be a good start. Activities to keep them occupied and have a focus. It's well known that things like boxing clubs and BMX clubs give these kids an alternatives to hanging round causing trouble. I realise that won't solve it completely but it might reduce the problem.

No!

No. Most of those parents will have been asking for help for years and got very little.

There is no help whatsoever for parents who are absolutely desperate. You only have to read the many threads on here to see that, in particular, trying to get help and support for mental health problems or special needs is a long, frustrating and often fruitless process.
Add to that the number of failing schools, useless and corrupt police, it is no wonder so many kids go off the rails.
The other thing I read about a lot on here is the number of fathers who simply opt out of parenting and supporting their children.
Social media and some really disgusting role models on line also play their part.
Maybe if some of that could be acknowledged and dealt with, parents would have a better chance.

With all the will in the world some teenagers are just selfish, violent arseholes no matter what their parents think or do and when these decent parents ask for help they're left almost completely unsupported and at the whims of their selfish, violent arsehole child who is just as likely to abuse them as a member of the general public.

Then there are the feckless parents who are setting their children up for failure by not parenting or modelling the exact behaviour being displayed in these feral gangs.

The feckless parents should be held accountable for their actions or lack of...although the flip side of this is that they're likely to exert terrible violence on the teenagers themselves which solves nothing and certainly isn't something I'd want to be responsible for.

I personally think group responsibility should be an option as a prosecution tool and might help more. Similar to the some of the gang laws in the US, if a member of the group you're with commits specific crimes then you are as guilty of that crime as the person committing it. Something like that might curb the amount of violent knife crime if they all know they can end up with serious prison sentences. Only one of that group of boys who have been terrorising the area is being punished - that's wrong in itself. Remove their power as a gang, make it a weakness to be associated with people who will commit crime.

Get out of here with your reasonable logic.

Don't be ridiculous

I don’t understand this comment.

Why do you think the OP would want to make an exception for (nice?) white middle class parents?

How do we know that?
Even if they are they aren't suffering as much as the Victims family?
We are so soft, we don't seem to be able to get a handle on anything?