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?

The OP is based on the naive belief that teenagers are just a direct product of the way they are parented. It’s much more complex than that. There are biological factors, social disadvantage, trauma. Obviously parenting is part of the picture and if parents are proved to be neglectful or abusive they should be held to account for that. It’s totally unreasonable though to automatically hold parents responsible for the actions of their teenagers. As someone said they aren’t dogs that you can keep muzzled on a lead.

My sister (mentioned above!) had a good childhood - private school (well, one term of it until she was expelled), her own pony (well, until she had it removed as she neglected it) and music lessons (well, until the instrument was taken away as she hit someone with it and broke it).

She was fucking terrifying. I'm not frightened of many people but I'm shit scared of her.

Is this a wind up? Obviously you can't prosecute people for a crime they didn't commit.

Also you say prosecute the parents. Which parents? The mum raising three kids single handedly? The dad who fucked off when kid was 3 months old and has seen them once a year since? The step dad who they've lived with for a few years? The grandma who took them in to try and knock some sense into them?

Sure, some parents don't care. Most are probably despairing long before this happens. You see posts on here, kids abusing their mums and stealing from them, lying about where they are, etc. Parents are working hard trying their best, or are themselves vulnerable and unable to parent them adequately. Either way, punishing them will help absolutely no one, least of all the family's victims.

Also where does it stop - 15? 18? 21?

Has any work been done to establish why?

I ask out of professional interest. IME it would be incredibly unusual for there not to be a reason. It might not be (probably isn't if you're unaffacted) directly related to your family, your parents might not even be aware, but there will be something. Or at least there always has been IME.

It’s not as linear as shit life = murderer. It is to do with how your upbringing, access to education and opportunities, the situations you find yourself in, the area you are in (eg gangs) and on and on affect you. Everyone will deal with these things differently.

You will always get psychopaths etc but these do not account for anywhere near the number of people convicted for violent crime.

@Bigweekend Apparently mother took her to see a child psychologist/psychiatrist can't remember which when she was about 5 who said "it's typical behaviour - just let the anger come out, and she'll be fine". What she had to be "angry" about I have no idea but she was impossible from the age of about 2.

After being expelled from the private school she went to a state school and expelled after year 9. Then she went to live with DF and SM and got expelled after year 11. She was arrested for GBH with intent and acquitted even though there was a mountain of evidence. She was then thrown out of the Royal Navy for violence. She then had another brush with the law - GBH for a different matter and did 9 months in prison should have been longer.

Looking back over ALL the incidences, I think she has a major problem with woman being in charge/control of her and will basically do anything to attract the attention of men.

this.

it would be nice to be able to neatly tie up "some kids are just born wrong" or "it's all the parents fault" but reality is more complex and tracing the lines of blame is going to be different in each case, and sometimes the parents will have done everything right but were let down by inadequate public services.

You're nice. Not. You cannot speak for how the parents are feeling, they are facing, quite rightly, the loss of their son's for years. Their sons behaved in a disgusting and depraved way, and the parents may well be part of why they became 'feral'. You seem to have no compassion for families struggling to overcome their own litany of parental abuse, neglect and deprivation. Trying to parent children, especially adolescents, is difficult. You only have to read the threads on Mumsnet from middle class parents driven to distraction by their teens. Factor into that poor housing, limited household income, unemployment, chronic illness, and teenagers who look at their future and see that there's nothing for them, no jobs, no flats, no chance to get a driving licence etc etc. Obviously they cannot always bemoan their fate, but I often wonder how on earth 17 yr olds from lowest income families manage to get a driving licence. My kids, along with all their friends, got driving lessons for their birthdays, took their test maybe twice (that's a few hundred quid in itself), then probably drove the family's second car. When you're in a family scraping along at the bottom, your evenings out with your mates is a lifeline. They lead each other on to not give a damn, why should they, who gives a damn about them? Middle class teenagers also commit awful murders, not this type of murder as they tend not to be hunting in packs, but they kill too. Family intervention for these inadequate, failing families, used to be part of Sure Start, that the current government stopped. If you invest in bringing a child up in its first few years you reap the benefits when that child is older. I'm sad for the victim's family, of course I am, but that does not mean I cannot empathise with the parents of these young murderers.

@KettrickenSmiled Quite the assumption! I grew up in a council house living in poverty, single parent family. I still live in a council house, I live in poverty (on benefits) single parent. I've lived through abuse (emotional, physical and sexual) throughout my childhood and adulthood ... but sure I have class prejudice. Nice though that you ASSUME I'm speaking about lower classes when I'm not, that says far more about what you really think regarding class that you'd assume that's what I meant.

You're so far off the mark it's ridiculous. I would have responded sooner but I've been dealing with my DS who has been the victim of of a physical assault at school today only for him to find out on the bus that someone has also videoed him getting changed during PE in his underwear and that's now circulating - he is now at breaking point after years of abuse, but yeah those poor bullies. 🙄

I don't think you can blame people. It's a pile of experience, from loads of different places, people, experience, health. None of us know how our DC will turn out.

Unfortunately it is the case for some and not for others.

I've met people who were never fit to be parents from day one and yet managed to have a few kids who they don't bother with. Then come the cries of 'he's got adhd.' So yes. In some cases they do deserve punishment! In others no. Should be on an individual need.

And who gets to decide which parents have to be punished for their children’s crimes and which ones don’t? Because I can see that working out to be a completely fair, unbiased system…

I very often think about the parents of the perpetrators when I see yet another teenage murder story on the news (London). How heartbreaking and tragic, for your innocent baby to turn out like that. I feel for your friend.

I never said how it should be decided but come on let's face it, we have all come across someone who shouldn't be having kids. They cannot even look after themselves. You hear of it on the news in some extreme
cases. There are many people out there doing an amazing job despite all the odds against them and others who just couldn't care less! Given the amount of police cuts over the years and lack of social workers it's highly unlikely to be implemented.

My old colleague had two children one followed a path that was actually incredibly boring but respectable and the other was a heroin addict who has been to prison twice and thankfully his children were removed.

There is no way someone like him should have had kids but that’s a whole moral debate of epic proportions.

If you’d asked me a few months ago OP I’d have mostly agreed with you. Recent events have changed my views.
I am good friends with a couple. They have been happily married for 22 years and have 3 DC aged 15-21. They are genuinely lovely people and kind, loving parents. Recently their youngest son has gone off the rails quite spectacularly. He has started verbally abusing teachers, threatening his parents and siblings and is generally making everyone’s life a misery and worrying his parents to death. I can honestly see him getting himself into serious trouble in the very near future. He has always done well at school and was such a sweet, polite boy. He basically fell in with a bad crowd and the influence they’re having on him is horrendous. His parents have done everything they can and school/SS are involved but are at a loss as regards what to do with him.
I can’t stress enough how lovely this couple are and what a loving and carefree childhood their kids had.

I agree in theory - having worked with at risk youth in the past most times their bad behaviour was linked to absent parents, abuse or neglect within the home etc, but practically speaking it would be tricky to hold parents responsible as not every parent is the same and also difficult to say exactly how much they contributed to the situation.

I mean the government has failed the children as well - drastic fall in youth provision availability since 2010 not to mention the closure of libraries which has been going on for a couple of decades. So do we shave some time off for Parents who are violent under bad governments? It just wouldn’t work in practice.

As some others have said more focus on prevention than punishment would be a start!

I usually avoid hypotheticals because MN is full of bullshit claims of what posters would do in situations they have not experienced. However.

I notice you don't say how you would deal with your children turning out to be wrong'uns.

Are your parents alive? Would you be happy for them to be punished for any of your wrongdoings?

Have you actually been in this situation, either would do, and would like to share your experience?

Why are we assuming these feral kids are all mentally ill/sen ???

I think wrongful death lawsuits against the parents of a killer (especially teen killers) do happen in the USA.

The parents of Gabby Petito (who was killed by her boyfriend) sued her killer’s parents and have been awarded $3m. I don’t think the murderer’s have $3m so not sure what the Petito’s family will actually receive. I don’t think it’s actually about the money for them anyway, it’s symbolic.

Why are we assuming these feral kids are all mentally ill/sen ???

I don’t think that there is an assumption all ‘feral kids’ are mentallynill or have some kind of Sen. However, people with learning disabilities, mental I’ll health, addiction issues and Sen are disproportionately represented in the prison population,

No one is assuming that.
It's given as a possible reason (not excuse).

This.

Also. I think you mean SN not SEN.

Of course the parents shouldn’t be blamed, how ridiculous. When would they stop being blamed? Those kids will grow up into adults, who may also kill, would the parents still be responsible then?

People are also ignoring that parents who don’t always do the best at parenting probably didn’t have the best upbringings either. So as I and a few others said earlier, how far back are we going to go?