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On February 6, 2024, Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter, each representing one of the lives lost in the 2021 Oxford High School shooting committed by her son, in Michigan.
Prosecutors portrayed Crumbley as an irresponsibly detached mother who was more engrossed in horses and an affair than her son's spiraling mental health. Additionally, she took her son to a shooting range mere days before he turned his new gun on his peers.
Though she never physically committed the act, prosecutor Marc Keast (pictured) insisted that Crumbley bore moral and legal responsibility. His argument focused on her failure to act, despite having opportunities to prevent the tragedy.
Crumbley’s case isn’t isolated. In recent years, authorities have increasingly pursued legal action against parents following gun violence by their children, especially in light of rising youth involvement in mass shootings.
The idea of holding parents legally accountable dates back over a century. In 1903, the state of Colorado passed the first such law, converting a parent’s moral duty into a legally enforceable obligation punishable by fines or imprisonment for their children’s misconduct.
Juvenile court judge Ben B. Lindsey, a driving force behind the 1903 law, questioned why it wasn’t standard practice to legally bind parents to their children's behavior. He framed the approach as both logical and essential for maintaining social order.
After World War II, the late 1940s and 1950s witnessed heightened anxieties about juvenile crime. Amid this tension, support for parental responsibility laws resurged, fueled by public forums, congressional hearings, and increased cultural focus on parenting as a solution to societal decay.
During the mid-20th century, police began advocating for courts specifically to handle negligent parents. This novel idea reflected the belief that behind every troubled youth stood a failed parent who required formal correction and possible punishment.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover boldly claimed in 1956 that these laws would curb juvenile crime. His endorsement carried weight and encouraged lawmakers to embrace them. He believed legal pressure on parents could instill better discipline in families.
From minor fines to multi-year sentences, parental punishment laws in the 1940s and '50s encompassed a vast range of penalties. Some laws, like a 1948 Louisiana statute, were so vaguely worded they could penalize virtually any parental oversight failure.
When a judge sentenced the mother of 14-year-old Frankie Rivera (who stole a gun and shot three people) to jail in 1947, controversy erupted. Critics decried the ruling as cruel and disproportionate, and argued that it punished someone already suffering from her child’s troubled life.
A 1957 survey revealed that nine out of 10 adults in Chicago, regardless of race or class, supported laws punishing parents for children’s crimes. These ideas had become widely accepted across geographic, social, and economic boundaries.
Where advocates and child welfare groups condemned the Rivera sentencing as unjust, law enforcement and some judges welcomed it. They hoped such rulings would serve as warnings and stimulate more parental vigilance in preventing juvenile misconduct.
Critics like attorney and psychologist Harriet Goldberg argued that troubled parents needed help, not jail. Citing her work in New York City's Children’s Court, she emphasized that many “delinquent parents” were themselves victims of trauma, and so they were better served by therapy and education than prosecution.
But while public support for these laws grew, professionals in social work and child advocacy circles warned they could destabilize already fragile families. They argued that punishment might simply exacerbate problems rather than resolve the root causes of juvenile crime.
Despite the criticism, by 1961 nearly every US state had implemented parental responsibility statutes, even though mounting evidence showed they had little tangible impact on crime rates.
Ironically, juvenile vandalism increased even after parental responsibility statutes for such offenses became widespread. By the mid-1960s, minors made up the majority of arrests for property crimes.
Despite the tough rhetoric, many prosecutors became reluctant to enforce the parental responsibility laws that they themselves championed. These statutes did not discriminate between willful neglect and mere parental misfortune, and lawyers were worried about punishing those who genuinely tried to guide their children.
By the 1970s, legal thinkers like Ellenmarie Shong labeled the parental responsibility movement a legal “farce.” The inconsistency in enforcement and its failure to deter crime demonstrated that such statutes were often more symbolic than effective.
As crime rates surged in the 1970s (especially in urban areas), new waves of ‘punish the parent’ laws emerged. Politicians capitalized on public fear, promoting these statutes as part of a broader ‘get-tough-on-crime’ platform.
Early parental responsibility laws targeted European immigrants, but by the 1970s enforcement skewed toward low-income Black communities. Laws once framed as moral correctives were repurposed as tools of racialized discipline and social control in urban America.
New curfew laws, often included under parental responsibility reforms, posed problems for working-class families. Parents working night shifts found it nearly impossible to enforce these curfews, especially during summer months when kids were often unsupervised.
Street crime in the late 1980s and early 1990s triggered another surge in parental responsibility laws. By 1995 alone, 10 new state-level statutes were passed. Lawmakers still had ongoing faith in this approach, despite its repeated failures.
Some experts mocked these laws as 'country club criminology.' They argued that the statutes sounded appealing to suburbanites, but did real harm by ripping apart vulnerable families who most needed support rather than legal threats.
Ultimately, many prosecutors started using parental responsibility statutes not to imprison parents but to mandate participation in drug treatment and parenting classes.
Parental responsibility laws have repeatedly failed to demonstrate actual crime deterrence. Despite their longevity and widespread use, no evidence conclusively shows that punishing parents meaningfully prevents children from engaging in criminal behavior.
The popularity of these laws often stems from political optics. They offer an easy narrative that allows politicians and voters to avoid dealing with more difficult issues like systemic poverty, mental health care, and gun access reform.
Instead of finger-pointing at parents, America might better serve its children by tackling the systemic roots of violence. These include poverty, abuse, untreated mental illness, and even the ready availability of deadly weapons in the hands of disturbed youth.
Sources: (Time) (The 74) (The Mirror)
When a teenager opens fire in a school hallway, the question that often follows the grief is “who else should be held responsible?” In the aftermath of the Oxford High School shooting in 2021, that question wasn’t just theoretical—it led to the courtroom conviction of the shooter's mother, Jennifer Crumbley, for involuntary manslaughter.
Her case, unsettling and unprecedented, has reignited a long-standing American impulse: to place legal blame on parents for the crimes of their children. But this instinct, however emotionally satisfying or politically convenient, is far from new.
For over a century, the United States has cycled through waves of ‘parental responsibility’ laws, each born from public outrage and each shadowed by the same enduring question: can we punish one person for another’s choices without distorting the meaning of justice? Click through this gallery to read more.
Facing growing societal panic over youth-led violence, American law enforcement and prosecutors are seeking harsher laws against parents. But this reaction, while emotionally satisfying for many, often neglects deeper, systemic contributors to juvenile delinquency and violent behavior.
Should parents go to jail for their kids' crimes?
Justice, blame, and the burden of raising a child in America
LIFESTYLE Legal
When a teenager opens fire in a school hallway, the question that often follows the grief is “who else should be held responsible?” In the aftermath of the Oxford High School shooting in 2021, that question wasn’t just theoretical—it led to the courtroom conviction of the shooter's mother, Jennifer Crumbley, for involuntary manslaughter.
Her case, unsettling and unprecedented, has reignited a long-standing American impulse: to place legal blame on parents for the crimes of their children. But this instinct, however emotionally satisfying or politically convenient, is far from new.
For over a century, the United States has cycled through waves of ‘parental responsibility’ laws, each born from public outrage and each shadowed by the same enduring question: can we punish one person for another’s choices without distorting the meaning of justice? Click through this gallery to read more.