Parents are Reponsible for the Crimes of their Children

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In Australia many children commit crimes and often the police and people do not know who to blame for their actions. These children commit crimes such as robbery, violence and stealing and they end up in juvenile. They live victims of their actions wondering whether to blame the children or their parents. This is a broad topic with many different views and arguments, I will only be focusing on three arguments that support and oppose whether parents should be held responsible for their children’s action or not. One of the biggest influences of children’s actions are parents due to the fact that their children look up to them that is why parents should be responsible for their crimes. In this essay I will be arguing that parents are responsible for the crimes of their children in particular behaviour, inadequate supervision and broken family structure.

Most parents do not teach their delinquent children discipline, appropriate manners and behaviour in the first place, without creating boundaries and rules for their children to follow at home and in public. They do not care about the types of risks their children face when committing crimes such as, graffiti etc. Victorian former police Commissioner Simon overland says, “Increased numbers of delinquents in juvenile justice systems is due to poor parenting skills” (Griffin, 2011). This could be a result of parents giving a lot of freedom to their children without consequences for their actions. When “Rarely disciplined …” children commit crimes against the law the first time and they get away with it, they “…learn to push the boundaries” (Griffin, 2011), because they start to realise, that what they are doing is acceptable and they do not face consequences for bad behaviour from ...

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...y who neither parents have criminal records have a very high chance of 76% for sons and more that 80% for daughters of not having a criminal record. More over a child born into a family whom both their parents have a criminal record is less likely to escape a criminal record, but more likely to have a criminal record for serious offence at 66.9% for sons and 43.8% for daughter” (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2011, para. 8.). Parents are responsible for the crimes of their children because when both parents are not paying attention and neglecting the child they end up committing crimes. The absence of a parent due to increase in divorce rates also contributes to children committing crime, because they may feel the support of both parents. This suggests that children will have difficulty adapting to the different rules and boundaries made by their parents.

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