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Voices & Opinion

POV: Should Parents Be Charged for a Child’s Crimes? That’s the Wrong Solution

“We’re not addressing the causes of school gun violence,” argues BU LAW clinical associate professor

Recently, a 14-year-old at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., killed two classmates and two teachers in a familiar tragedy of missed warning signs and easy access to weapons. But local prosecutors charging his father with murder is a different kind of unfolding tragedy.

Earlier this year, prosecutors brought similar charges against Jennifer and James Crumbley in Michigan, although for a lesser crime of manslaughter, after their teenage son killed four students in 2021. Just as with Georgia, there were exceptional circumstances in that case that supported a prosecution. 

Nevertheless legal scholars, including myself, worried about the escalation of criminalizing parents as accomplices for their children’s acts. At the time, Michigan, like Georgia, did not mandate weapons storage. Unable to charge the parents with lower offenses, prosecutors decided to hold the parents responsible for the actual killings, because they did not take extra safeguards despite warning signs of mental health issues. Unfortunately this approach is a poor substitute for firearm safeguards and mental health support. These prosecutions are concerning because holding people criminally responsible for the actions of others expands the already wide net of criminal responsibility.

We have grappled as a country with our over-incarceration problem. Our approach serves no public safety benefit and instead has devastating consequences, such as causing more crime, inflicting harm on communities, and inhibiting other law enforcement efforts. Jail is violence in the most literal sense. It reduces the life expectancy of those who are incarcerated, and the partner and children of an incarcerated person suffer economic, emotional, and educational harms.

With all these negative costs, why do we keep over-incarcerating? Because we also are a country that believes we can incarcerate our way out of problems that we lack the political will to address in other ways. It is not surprising that prosecutors are expanding liability in the cases of school shootings. Firearms are politically contentious and have proven hard to regulate, so it may be easier to incarcerate individuals piecemeal than to address the underlying causes. 

For various political reasons, we cannot actually reach the root causes of school violence: the saturation of guns with little oversight or regulation combined with a lack of mental health support. Gun manufacturers are powerful, and as a result, have been immunized from being liable for gun violence. States also decide not to place other restrictions for political reasons.

Georgia legislators rejected a requirement to safeguard guns in a home because it would be an imposition on gun rights, and they rejected red flag laws that could have authorized removing guns from a household. It is illogical to turn around and then use the much harsher response of expanded criminal liability for murder to enforce behavior that we are unwilling to regulate through more direct means.

These prosecutions are a step in the wrong direction, increasing direct liability for secondary connection to a crime, when we have begun to recognize the unjust disproportionality of similar approaches.

The shootings in Michigan and Georgia were horrific. And it may seem that we should dissuade such acts through any means at our disposal. But using criminalization to solve problems comes with disastrous consequences. In my experiences as a public defender in the Bronx, I have seen how well-intentioned principles cause injustice for marginalized, poor communities of color.

We caused immeasurable harm with incarceration as a solution for the drug problems of the ’80s, which increased drug deaths, strengthened criminal enterprises, and devastated communities of color. We also turned to expanding criminal liability for the opioid crisis—although in a corollary to the issue of gun violence. This opioid criminalization caught thousands in its snare, yet still missed those most culpable because their power and wealth insulated them.

The expansion of liability used by prosecutors in the Georgia and Michigan cases can apply to other circumstances. Parents who fail in less dramatic ways and with less horrific consequences can be prosecuted under the same theories. Parents who don’t have means for support will be disproportionately affected, and communities of color will be subjected to much greater scrutiny.

Mass incarceration is fueled by giving prosecutors more power in a reasonable-sounding situation, because that increased power then catches many more people in the net of the criminal system.

Finding more people to punish is an appealing solution, and incarceration is often a rare area of consensus in our society. After a tragedy it can make us feel like at least we’re doing something to go after every person we can, in the harshest way possible. But instead we’re assuaging our feelings while causing real harms. And we’re not addressing the causes of school gun violence in a methodical or effective way. 

As we turn again to criminalization as a problem-solving tool, I hope we will learn the lessons from past attempts. We cannot incarcerate our way out of our problems we lack the will to directly tackle.

Angelo Petrigh is a clinical associate professor at the BU School of Law; he teaches the Defender Clinic in BU’s Criminal Law Clinical Program. Prior to joining Boston University, he was the training director in the Bronx Defenders’ Criminal Defense Practice, where he handled a wide-ranging caseload, from low-level misdemeanors to homicides. He also taught at national trial skills programs and criminal defense conferences and trained other public defense offices around the country, particularly those seeking to transition to an interdisciplinary, holistic model.

“POV” is an opinion page that provides timely commentaries from students, faculty, and staff on a variety of issues: on-campus, local, state, national, or international. Anyone interested in submitting a piece, which should be about 700 words long, should contact today@bu.edu. BU Today reserves the right to reject or edit submissions. The views expressed are solely those of the author and are not intended to represent the views of Boston University.