Should parents of children who commit criminal offences have their benefits cut?
The UK government is strengthening parenting orders so parents of children who commit crimes or cause anti-social behaviour must attend counselling or face fines up to £1,000 and, in extreme cases, jail. Use of these orders has fallen sharply from over 1,000 in 2009/10 to just 33 in 2022/23. Recent reforms focus on earlier family intervention and support rather than cutting benefits to children, with policy instead aimed at reducing child poverty through measures such as scrapping the two-child benefit limit.
38 Opinions
Collective punishment is detestable. You shouldn't be punished for a crime you didn't commit. Teenagers are entirely separate human beings from their parents, it doesn't work in school attendance and it won't work in fixing the behaviour of the children.
If the parents are as bad they will just steel things instead, also who's to say the poor are the biggest criminals
I'd argue that the parents should be fined, regardless of benefits/employment status
No, schools individualise children so and have done since Blair/Brown tenures So to put onus on parents is wrong. Schools and quangos are to blame. Tougher child sentences and borstal schools will sort it out and national service.
It is not upto parents to decide who their kids play with. A parent's job is to guide a child and let them grow in a good Christian way.
Collective punishment is the behaviour of tyrants
I don't think there is a direct link on this. A good parent should not face sanctions. However, I do believe benefits come with responsibilities so if the parent is actively supporting this criminality then the benefits should be brought into play.
Actions have consequences. Those same criminals should be sent to boot camp for basic training and to be war ready
Not binary. There are caring responsible parents who for whatever reasons cannot control their children. Fining or reducing their benefits would not be equitable. In a better run State one would hope that a Justice system would be the arbiter of fairness which could make my vote a ‘Yes’, but we have a Blairite ideological Socialist Justice system not one that is blind to bias & fair. Also it comes down to usual sets of parents having children they will never be able to fund.
I fail to see any correlation with the problem at hand. Squeezing people financially distracts from the task of parenting. It also risks tempting parents into setting a bad example to address the shortfall.