The riots, and the subsequent focus on problem families, have caused people to ask whether parents are taking sufficient responsibility for their children. Louise Casey has just been appointed to join up government policy on troubled and troublesome families.
When the Prison Reform Trust does surveys about what works in terms of stopping people offending, people always cite better supervision by parents as their top ask. This is worrying because it implies that people think most crime is committed by children and young people, which it isn't. There are certainly parents who don't supervise their children well enough but the picture is usually more complex. There are many parents who are trying to supervise their children and who are at their wits end because they are not succeeding. Many parents whose children get into trouble with the law say they have been begging for years for help, but have never got any. Once their children are convicted, they are offered parenting classes or family therapy. This is valuable help but should be available earlier. And parents should be far more integrated into the youth justice process. In general, the child is dealt with as an offender who will serve a sentence as an individual. For rehabilitation to really work, the family should be included in key meetings about the sentence and encouraged to attend every court hearing.
But the hidden issue affecting crime, children and parents is about corporate parents, and children in the care of the state. Most children are taken into care because of family breakdown, abuse or neglect. They are already vulnerable when they enter care. Yet they end up getting into trouble with the law much more than other children, and are disproportionately represented in prison. Though only 6% of all children are in care, around a third of the under 18 year olds in prison in England and Wales have been in care. If children are properly being "looked after", how come they get so deep into offending? What we know is that when looked after children start offending, children's services sometimes hand responsibility over to youth offending teams. More often than not, the child's key social worker (in loco parentis) does not appear in court when "their" child is in danger of being imprisoned. This is poor practice. Before blaming natural parents for their children's crimes, people should ensure that children in the care of the state get the best supervision and support possible, particularly when they get into trouble with the law.