Parental responsibility for youth crime: a comparative study of legislation in four countries

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Date
2010-04-06T14:13:21Z
Authors
Parada, Malgorzata Maria (Gosia)
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Abstract

This is a comparative study of how four countries –Canada, United States of America, England and Wales, and Australia –have developed youth crime related parental responsibility laws. In particular, I explore how governments have responded to calls for making parents more responsible for the criminal behavior of their children by relying on methods of governing that seek to incorporate the concept of “responsibilization” into legislation and practice. In doing so, I show how governments in a number of countries have ostensibly moved toward less state intervention in the prevention of youth criminality and have come to rely more on parents by enacting laws that acknowledge parental accountability for the criminality of children. In addition, this study uses the concept of policy transfer to examine how those responsible for developing youth criminal justice policy look to policies or laws in other jurisdictions for ways to prevent youth criminality. Despite the fact that there are similarities in legislation across the four countries examined in this study, only minimally do governments in these countries make reference to policies found in other countries. The thesis also looks at specific national and state–level government debates surrounding parental responsibility laws, and the perceptions governments elected officials have of youth criminality and parental responsibility.

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Keywords
Parental Responsibility, Youth Justice Legislation, Responsibilization, Policy Transfer
Citation
Hutchinson, Terry, Gosia Parada and Russell Smandych. 2009. “Show me a bad kid and I’ll show you a lousy parent’: Making Parents Responsible for Youth Crime in Australian and Canadian Contexts.” Australasian Canadian Studies 26 (2): 49-86.