Parental accountability for children's offences

THE EDITOR: Recently, there have been many calls for parents to be held accountable for their children’s misbehaviour and offences. A columnist in one of last Sunday’s newspapers called for laws to be enacted, similar to the UK Crime and Disorder Act, under which parents could be held accountable for offences committed by their children.

Having spent 27 years engaged in legal education, legal literacy is a subject close to my heart. I wish, therefore, through the medium of your newspaper, to inform members of the public and, surprisingly, also parliamentarians, that there exists a law, under which parents, guardians or people with responsibility for a child can be held accountable for crimes committed by their children.

That law is in the Children Act, 2012, which was passed when the then Kamla Persad-Bissessar People's Partnership government was in power. Under that act, a parent is required to attend court when his/her child is charged with an offence. That parent may be liable to pay a fine, damages or costs unless the parent cannot be found or the court determines that the child’s wrongdoing was not as a result of parental neglect.

The court is also empowered to order the parent to attend counselling, or, with consent, to enter into a recognisance to take proper care of the child and to exercise proper supervision over the child. The court may also order the parent or guardian of the child to give security for the child’s good behaviour.

What is required, therefore, is not for a law to be enacted to provide for a parent to be held accountable for his/her child’s wrongdoing, but for the existing laws to be enforced.

But a word of caution: Some studies have shown that the resultant tension between parent and child when a parent is held accountable for a child’s misdeeds creates serious problems in the home. One area of universal agreement is that attacking the root causes of delinquency and crime produces far better results than dealing with the consequences of crime.

It is to be hoped that the restorative justice policy, that was created by the Justice Ministry in 2015, will be unearthed, dusted off and, if necessary, refined and used as a basis for new legislation.

Restorative justice has been defined as a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offence and to collectively identify and address harms, needs and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible (Howard Zehr).

There are at least 250 people locally who have been trained to facilitate restorative conferences. Very few of them have been able to use their training within our education or justice systems.

Restorative justice has been proven to build empathy, increase safety and victim satisfaction, heal the effects of crime, reduce recidivism, and provide empowerment and community support. Given its success in several parts of the world, I trust that this revival of an indigenous form of justice will soon become part of our justice system.

HAZEL THOMPSON-AHYE

via e-mail