The new Youth Delinquency Action Plan of Flemish ministers Zuhal Demir (N-VA) and Hilde Crevits (CD&V) states that judges should not only be able to punish young offenders, but also their parents. Is that a good idea? Earlier today, we let our experts speak. Now it’s your turn.
Roger Kerhove: “Finally a wise decision. Parents should become more concerned with their children’s education and should also take a close look at their children’s friends. That’s not happening. They mess everything up.”
Dick DeZeure: “Heavy fines could be an incentive for some parents to raise their offspring better. If you consciously choose to have children, you must therefore bear full responsibility for this. So yes, parents should be punished for misbehavior of their children, especially when it comes to recurring facts. If you don’t want to listen, just feel!”
Marc Millecam: “It is certainly true that the upbringing of the children by the parents plays a very important role. However, this has been watered down in recent years, children can and get everything. Moreover, nowadays the children are more often elsewhere than with their parents, or even raised by others. Who are you going to punish as a judge then?”
Sabrina Christian: “Yes, it is and remains the responsibility of the parents. They are primarily responsible for the education of their children. Not the community or the state. The trend has declined markedly in recent decades. Making kids is the easiest. Keeping them on the straight and narrow and giving them a decent upbringing with norms and values is another story. Many do NOT realize the importance of it.”
Johan Van Oevelen: “Yes, after research of course. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. In some cases parents really can’t help it, in other cases it’s the upbringing. I advocate, subject to research.”
Jean Pierre Robbens: “What is the problem with youth crime in the first place? Still in education, I think. Now parents are no longer allowed to punish their children and can only raise a finger if they do something. Respect is no longer instilled, just look at the schools. If we had to do this in the past, the room would have been too small.”
George Verbiest: “If there is real evidence that the parents have not tried at all to fulfill their parenting obligation, yes. But there are also teenagers that nothing helps. They just need to be placed and supervised. Maybe then something can be saved.”
Benny Gotty: “Parents are already civilly responsible for their children. Perhaps a little stricter and harder on that. Especially when criminal offenses are committed by these minors. Everything else is rhetoric. You cannot hold parents responsible when their children are of age. Where does it end?”
Vera Andrews: “If parents themselves carry all kinds of vulnerabilities and cannot or do not want to assume their parental role, they should not start having children. In Belgium, one is not obliged to reproduce, but if one does choose to, it is normal that one is responsible for what the offspring put out and that one is possibly obliged to take responsibility and education to heart through punishment.”
Ludwig Nollet: “Minors are specially protected because they are assumed to be still in their ‘formative phase’ and not fully responsible for their actions or foreseeing the consequences. Parents are often already victims of their own limitations in raising children through their own upbringing or unrealistic assessments of the world in which the minors find themselves. Punishment must, but must also contain a substantial part of mandatory reorientation in the longer term.”
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