To wonder what happens? Parents of Children commit serious crime.

[PassingStranger]

Not sure if anyone will know but.
In cases where children/teens commit serious crime/murder do the parents get to keep their other children if they have them?

Do they go into care, or are they subject to any parenting orders or anything..
Just wondered?

For example James Bulgers killers, if they had younger siblings do they stay with the parents?

It’s not a blanket rule. Social services would be involved and they’d look at the family and make a judgement based on what was going on.

Is that fact or a guess??

My understanding is the same as @CultureAlienationBoredomandDespair
They’ll look at the family and if they’re all perfectly normal and average with one child having done a terrible thing, then no. If they’re letting their DC run wild an/or their parenting could explain the child’s crime, then that’s probably going to have a different outcome.

It’s a fact that it’s not a blanket rule.

Well it obviously depends on the risk of harm to the other child. No, there isn’t a blanket rule, of course there isn’t.

It’s a fact. They are not going to automatically have children taken away, but SC will be involved, so they might see a need.

I have no idea, but surely not all parents of children who commit a serious crime are responsible for their child's actions and like PP said I'd hope it would be on a case by case basis

Do you think the parents are somehow responsible and they should have their other children removed from their care?

Of course upbringing has some responsibility.

Just to clarify, are you saying that a child’s upbringing will have some connection to whether or not they commit crime?

Of course it does.
No child is born evil.

Thats not to say it is always the parents. There is so many outside influences. But that all counts as "upbringing"

In the US recently the parents of a school shooter were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. They'd bought him a gun as a present.

@WilfredsPies Are you contesting that thought ?

I’m not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m happy to be corrected by someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, but I think you’ve massively oversimplified this to the point that it’s just completely incorrect.

It’s the old debate of nature versus nurture. Yes, environmental factors are incredibly important, but our genetics influence us to how we respond to those factors. Hence two siblings brought up identically and one becomes a serial killer while the other becomes a surgeon. And obviously not everyone who commits serious crime is a psychopath. Some will be plain evil from wonderful homes, and some will be tragic figures who never stood a chance. The point is, you can’t just blame the parents in many cases, because they won’t have done anything wrong.

I think you’ll find people are generally born psychopaths. Sociopaths are generally made but they can also be born inherently sociopathic.

I think it may depend on the type of crime and the age of the child.
But usually there will be some SS involvement, even if it's cursory safeguard concerns for other children in the family.

There were significant reports about the families of James Bulgers killers, none of it very palatable.

Yeah, to an extent, I am.

I totally agree that there are cases where you could predict a child’s outcome just by looking at their terrible surroundings. But there are enough murderers who have come from nice families where their siblings are perfect lovely people who wouldn’t hurt a fly.

I don’t think it’s a case of ‘it must be the parents’ in most cases. Brains and genetics are more complicated than that.

It completely depends on the circumstances.
If the child convicted has siblings then it would automatically trigger a safeguarding enquiry for each of those children.

The safeguarding panel would act in the childs best interest. The decision making is complex & based on each individual situation.

I don’t think that’s true. Or at least it’s not the current thinking. They can’t diagnose psychopathy in young children (presumably because they’re still learning empathy etc? Just my guess) so saying someone is born a psychopath is sheer guesswork. There’s nothing scientific to back that up. By the time they can diagnose it, nurture will be part of the equation.

My eldest son (audhd) was arrested for looking at illegal images a week after his 18th birthday. I still had a 15 and a 11 yo at home. In the immediate aftermath he was bailed and stayed at home. My daughter and I went to stay at my sister’s and my son had to stay with my eldest daughter until social services had done an assessment and we had got my son settled into a flat with his dad a few weeks after. SS had no concerns about my parenting and understood that the ND and his other issues being groomed to be trans had led to him taking the very wrong path. SS gave us rules that were followed and checked in 3 times by phone and that was it. Previously he had been a 100% rule follower and got excellent GCSEs and A levels etc. thankfully he has done the rehab stuff, the courses and 5 -6 years in he fully realises exactly what he did and why it was wrong etc. it was incredibly tough for our family, especially as he pleaded guilty but due to Covid it took two whole years to go to court for sentencing and then hit the news and our family was very well known in the local community. But we are still here and just living our lives. It does still take the breath out my entire body when I have a flash back to it happening in real time though. We had no idea at all and thought we had taken all the precautions. He can’t be alive with under 18s but he isn’t attracted to children at all thank God, he was just grossly irresponsible. His shpo is 10 years so Still a way to go.

This.

It’s complex, and involves an interplay of nature and nurture. Nature can load the bullet, but nurture can determine whether the trigger is ever pulled or not.

For example, someone can indeed be born with a predisposition towards, and later develop, psychopathy (or ASPD), but it doesn’t automatically follow that a psychopath will be a criminal, or present as a ‘bad’ person (and indeed, I believe the majority are not criminal). James Fallon is an interesting example, a neuroscientist studying the brains of serial killers that discovered his own brain presented as psychopathic, and that he also had a particular variant of a gene that is linked to violence and aggression:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/

Social services will be involved simply because having a sibling who commits that kind of crime can be very damaging regardless of any other factors

There are incredibly rare incidents, the type where everyone remembers the name of the perpetrator, where there might be one person who seems to have just been born evil, but this is not the case in the overwhelming majority of killings.

In most of the stabbings carried out by teens at the moment the lad that dies is as involved in the whole culture as the accused. Both wandering the streets carrying knives. Whereas I think everyone would acknowledge there are all sorts of influences on our lives, you would be very naive to think parents couldn't have had a more positive influence.

Teen child of a family member committed a horrible crime, not murder but bad enough that they were jailed for ten years. It had nothing to do with their upbringing and was an act of utter, utter stupidity from someone who was definitely brought up to know better (and was rightly jailed for that stupidity, even by their own admission).

The other children aren't automatically subject to a safeguarding review and Social Services don't automatically become involved, this is only triggered if there are concerns that the child's home life might have contributed to their crime or if there are concerns that other children/adults in the home might be at risk. This is assessed by the police during their arrest, interview, and charging procedures. There were no safeguarding concerns in relation to my relatives' family/home so there was no SS involvement and no safeguarding assessment.

There are cases of young people who are seriously mentally unwell whose parents have spent years trying to get appropriate help and who have been totally failed by the state and society.

It's not about blame, but it's reality that your childhood and any adverse childhood events significantly affect you. There's a reason care experienced children are more likely to enter the criminal justice system and have significantly higher rates of mental health difficulties.

There is tons of research to back up the link between things like poverty and generational trauma with crime.

Anyway, it will depend on the circumstances. If you have abusive parents misusing drugs, then that's different to an average working class family whose kid has been sucked into the wrong crowd.

Anyone is capable of committing a crime, but it's foolish to thing our early years and relationships with our attachment figures don't significantly impact how we relate to the world. A lot of the prison population, particularly women's prison, are vulnerable people in their own right.