Parents to be held Accountable

It's an age old question; how much can parents be held accountable for the actions of their children? A local judge here in town answered it well when he took the hard line and ordered parents to pay for the criminal actions of their children. He became the first in Queensland to enforce section 258 of the Juvenile Justice Act which goes some way to policing the performance of parents. The ACT says that the court may act if "a parent of the child may have contributed to the fact the offence happened whilst not adequately supervising the child." The judge's actions will no doubt be welcomed by the wider community. It will be greeted with a sigh that finally someone in the judicary is finally listening to growing numbers of people disatisfied with the so-called justice being melted out by our courts. It will also be welcomed by other organisations with a stake in younger generations ,such as schools and sporting organisations who too often have been left to clean up after bad parenting. The key to the judges decision lies in the simple observation that two sets of parents "didn't really try". It was not a question wether or not they loved or cared about their kids. These parents just gave up. The court found the kids rarely ever attended school, no home supervision from the parents,no punishment system in place in the home, they were allowed to come and go as they pleased.
It is another symptom of our throw away society and it is a story very familiar in many neighborhoods. There are social reasons for the decline of parental supervision, and there will be those who argue that it is the parents who are let down. Someone has to draw the line otherwise nothing will change, especially here in my town. You see this town has a huge problem with a certain type of child roaming the streets at all hours of the night.The same kids break into cars, shopping centres, and in this case the little treasures set fire to a vagrant....because they were bored! Mum and Dad now are forced to pay $10 a week for 100 weeks, to the victim.
By ordering the families to take some responsibility the judge is sending a message to other parents.....'don't shirk your responsibilites', because you will no longer be aided and abetted by a system that has not been very good at bringing people to account.
till next time, Michelle.