NCJ Number
229628
Date Published
2010
Length
9 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines current British policy regarding parenting in relation to youth justice, with a focus on the increasing use of parenting orders, which are court orders intended to make parents "responsible" by requiring them to attend programs that teach parenting skills.
Abstract
Significant concerns about the use of parenting orders have existed for some time, but very little has been done to address these concerns. One criticism is that both a youth and his/her parents are issued court orders for the same offense, and both face criminal sanctions if orders are breached. Also, the criminalizing intervention parents experience is not governed by such legal principles as "burden of proof," "beyond reasonable doubt," and "due legal process." The targeting of particular parents for parenting orders also raises concerns that in the decisionmaking processes of both the courts and youth offending teams (YOTs), a division may be made between parents who are viewed as "willing" and "responsible" and parents who are viewed as belligerent and uncaring. The latter may be issued parenting orders while the former are released from fulfilling an order. In addressing these issues, the author reports on his own research, which involved interviewing 17 parents who had been issued a parenting order. Almost all of these parents had been asking various agencies for voluntary support for a number of years. The research findings suggest that attempts to expand the use of parental-responsibility laws, as has been proposed, will always fail to address the complexities of material and social disadvantage that shape the context of youth crime. As long as such laws remain in place this chapter recommends that magistrates involve parents in the sentencing of their children and that any involvement of parents in the fulfillment of the sentence take into account the socioeconomic pressures many parents with delinquent children face. 24 references