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?

@kittensinthekitchen - certainly does, thank you

Sure, sure.

Because all that unpleasantness is only ever perpetrated by "feral youth" - which is of course your dog-whistle disguise so that you don't need to come out directly with your class prejudice & say "it's all the lower orders' fault."

Of course, middle class kids are completely different. That's why there is NO bullying, antisocial behaviour, sexual assault, or rape in naice private schools.
Oh - hold on ...

Journo or no journo, they are clearly a goady fucker.

Come on @dottypotter - how many children do you have, & how old are they?

A few years ago there was a trial where ‘problem’ families were assigned social workers but at a much lower number of people per SW. it was something like 6 families to one social worker, and that SW was just working with those 6 families for a year. They helped the families so much, and it was calculated that the savings were huge. It saved in terms of fewer trips to doctors and hospitals, fewer police call outs, less involvement in criminal activity, reduced truancy etc. As I recall it was calculated that the cost was £50,000 per social worker, but the savings were five times that in financial terms, so roughly £250,000 per six families over the year of taxpayers money saved. The trial came to an end and that was it. It infuriates me that trials are done that prove hugely successful, save the taxpayer a fortune, then nothing is implemented as a result. A friend was involved in a different trial as an outreach worker for young substance abusers, and at end the council said they didn’t have the money to widen the trial or implement any of what had worked, even though it would have saved a great deal of money longer term, plus reduced crime etc. This is the kind of area in which ‘joined up thinking’ is vitally needed.

@KettrickenSmiled exactly.

It says the boys had gone out looking for trouble!
Why?
Isn't it better and easier to be nice to people.

And of course the lower orders can't afford the top notch barristers and solicitors to bend the law to get them off like their betters.

Absolutely this.

Really? You think the answer to this is to tell the boys to just play nice?

You actually have no idea.

Maybe not a blame the parents scheme but whenever you get a child involved in a murder or something equally awful there should be an investigation. Look into their family and whether their needs have been met by school and local authority look at local gangs figure out what went wrong for them.
Then use that information to support younger people more likely to go down that path. We need to stop this happening not just punish people

@strumpert - well if she's a journalist, she is just winding your opinion to make money

Don't rise to it
J

This!

Sorry, but until you've worked with many feral kids and met their parents, you would realise that the majority of feckless violent children ARE the product of their parents.

@LexMitior wise words. I'm one of them autistics wot takes medication so as far as the op's previous threads go I should be thrown on the scrap heap anyway.

But j managed to produce 3 kids who are functioning members of society and all graduates. Where's my badge?

I asked you what would you do?
How would you as a parent deal with a "feral" child?

Quick, let’s just tell everyone to be nice. It will solve EVERYTHING. No more crime, social issues, mental health issues. If only we’d known sooner.

It isn't better and easier to be nice to people all the time.

That's a facile comment

It isn't always better to be nice.

Wise up.

In the cases where these go off the rails but have had stable home life, what is the cause?

How about they have none of those problems, they are just little shits, without an ounce of respect for anyone else?

How do you define a stable home life?

There's a thread where there's a 10 year old throwing desks and bringing knives to school and the school aren't (can't?) do anything to protect the others. The child with problems has a right to education and nowhere else to go so the other children are suffering. Mother of this child claims that she has asked for help but nothing is offered. You can see how children like this could end up like the children in the article.

I am a single parent so I am going to be sensitive about "imprison the parents" theory. I have to work so I have to hope that my teenagers are behaving when they are away from me. I have to hope that they go to school and not getting into trouble. There's no other way for me to run the show. Their dad lives hours away and has to hope that my "winging it" is enough. I am lucky that it seems to be working but notice that important word "lucky" I didn't do anything out of the ordinary for my children to turn out well behaved but they had luck being born in a situation where the odds of being "good" was stacked in their favour.

When abuse cases come to light in the press it's clear that social services only act when things go seriously wrong and they know where low level neglect is happening. I'm not in child protection but when I read about children living in homes where there's animal shit on the walls and SS know that yet the kids live there are going to be vulnerable to gangs etc.

Investment in social services, Child Maintenance Service (so kids aren't living in poverty) , police, PRUs etc would save lives but politicians are inevitably about the short term election cycle so don't care about investment now to save lives in future.

A study was done about Surestart Centres after they were all shut due to austerity and they saved lives and saved the NHS money through fewer hospitalisations and staff being able to give low level support that Health Visitors didn't have time for. As it affected poorer areas more than richer ones it would have been an easy way to prove commitment to levelling up but of course politicians want short term results and this sort of thing takes longer.

Problem 15 year olds were problem 12 year olds, 10 year olds, 8 year olds... I bet they were known by school, the police or other services well before they did what they did. Reality is that low level crime like being caught with weed, shoplifting low value items like vape refills... is not really dealt with. The services hope that the child decides to stop but it's easy to see how it could escalate when there's no repercussions.

@girlfriend44 fair enough. So what do you do about them?

The children I work with (mostly not murderers but probably what OP would call ferral) on the whole aren't awful people.

They're thoughtful children with the weight of the world in their shoulders. Often amazingly funny and resilient in the circumstances.

They're dealing with things most adults couldn't cope with. We just don't get children who are "naughty" just because. They all have the most devastating stories. Usually not just one trauma, but multiple terrible experiences over a long period of time. Their families have usually experienced the same, sometimes going back generations.

IME their crimes come either when they're exploited by gangs who promise them something "nice" society thinks they don't deserve or when they're in crisis and their anger bubbles over, but God knows they good have reason to be angry.

Unless you've lived it or worked with these families you can't begin to understand just how awful life is for some people. The things we see and hear daily would seem far fetched in a soap

I work in a scenario where I see victims of gangs, children/teens in gangs and parents of both of the above (often the same people in the sense that by far the majority of victims of gang violence are other difficult / feral young people).

My observation is that there are 5 types of parents in these cases:

1. good normal parents who have other "normally behaved" children and whose children have gone off the rails for no clear reason (although there often is evidence later on of sexual violence outside the home that the parent was unaware of)
2. caring loving parents who can't be around as much as their child needs (and every child is different but some need more parenting than others) - particularly if they are on their own and having to work lots of hours - and are therefore less present than one would like them to be and therefore their children less supervised (hence potential victims of sexual violence as above)
3. permissive "I want to be my children's friend" type parents who never discipline them
4. crap parents who have too many children than they can cope with (I see countless families with 5 or more children who take very little responsibility for them once they can answer back) - almost all of whom have had crap parenting themselves and reading their histories makes you despair
5. violent abusive parents who encourage their children to be feral (this is the rarest category in my experience)

The trouble is that all parents fall into one of those categories, including all of us here.
Parenting does affect how children behave but not in a linear fashion.. Sadly it's rarer for children to escape bad parenting and achieve more in life than it is for children to go wrong despite good parenting.

Anyone who can't see a link between the criminal underspending on public services and worsening of children's outcomes is woefully ignorant or deliberately obtuse.

I try and refer to CAMHS often in my role. I would say 90% of referrals are rejected as they are "not bad enough" and the rest have a 2 year waiting list. Some of those children just need family support but many of them need more and it's just not out there.

*Personally I think we as a society are way more affected by parents in category 3 who raise absolutely ignorant, self absorbed monstrosities of young people who bully others and whose goal in life is too appear on some inane TV show (and those that they bully are often the ones that then go on to have severe issues).

So many posts on here have shown otherwise.