Around 1,700 buildings and homes have been destroyed by 18 separate fires that erupted across California a little more than a week ago. The fires forced an estimated 500,000 people to flee their homes and burned at least 426,000 acres of land, stretching from Malibu to Mexico. Most of the fires have now been extinguished.
Figures on the monetary and physical damage caused by the fires are staggering. At least three people died, and 40 people were injured. Additionally, California State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner estimated that damage from the fires exceeds $1.5 billion.
Each of these fires had a different cause. A 10-year-old boy accidentally started one of them by playing with matches. The results of the boy’s pyromania are far less playful: 60 square miles of land and 21 homes were destroyed before the fire was put out by firefighters.
Local prosecutors have not yet decided whether to charge the boy or his parents with criminal charges for the fire and its damages. The boy and his parents may still be held liable civilly for the damages — which have already been estimated to be several million dollars.
Situations such as this one raise the question of whether parents should be held criminally and/or civilly liable for the actions of their children. All U.S. legal jurisdictions except Washington, D.C. currently have some form of criminal and or civil parental responsibility law on the books to this effect.
If the adage is correct then, if you play with fire, you should get burned. But what about if your kids, not you, play with fire? What if they burn others, their homes and possessions? Should it be you or your kids that get “burned?”
I would argue that specifically in situations of arson and related damages, it should be children, not their parents, that get “burned.”
Let me be clear: I do not believe that if parents encourage or negligently enable their children to commit arson that they should not be found at fault for their actions. But I do not believe that parents should be held entirely at fault for the damaging actions committed by their children — in this case, the fire and its resultant damages. If parents are bad and neglectful, and they contribute to their child’s wrongdoing, that’s a different story. But in this case, it appears the parents had no knowledge of, nor did they enable, their child’s arsonist actions.
The child started the fire, burned the land and destroyed others’ homes and possessions on his own. So, I believe the child, not his parents, should be held responsible. If that means the child works for the rest of his life to pay off as much of the monetary damages as possible, and all of his toys get burned to teach him a lesson, that’s how it should be.
I know that children are young, inexperienced and otherwise not yet wise in all the ways of the world. They do not always know or understand the consequences of their actions. It’s more than likely that the child who caused this just wanted to play with fire and didn’t know it would get so out of hand as to burn miles and miles of land and destroy 21 homes. But in the end, the child caused the fire, not his parents. Punishing a child’s parents does little to directly teach a child that what they did was wrong and deter the child from committing arson again.
There are monetary and other benefits to holding children, not their parents, responsible for their own actions.
In situations where the child causes immense damage to life, limb or property and the parents are held criminally responsible and go to jail, the child loses out on his or her parents’ financial support and supervision. The child would then likely become the state’s responsibility and a burden to taxpayers, just as the parent in jail would be a burden to taxpayers as well. Contrarily, if the child was held responsible for his or her own actions and goes to jail, the parent is still able to visit and emotionally and financially support the child while they serve time for their wrongful actions and learn their lesson. The child becomes a burden on taxpayers while in jail, but upon release, has a support system in family to help him or her become a productive member of society, hopefully having learned from his or her mistakes. Additionally, as most parents do not just have one child, parents who are not in jail are still able to provide for their other children. Holding children responsible for their actions instead of their parents is arguably better in many ways.
What this all comes down to for me is my philosophy that each person should be held responsible for his or her own actions and no one else’s. When we’re deciding who should be held responsible for damages and wrongful acts, it makes sense to hold the person that committed the act responsible. With children, factors such as their knowledge of right and wrong, age and influence or negligence on the part of their parents should be considered. But if the child commits the wrong, it should be the child that gets punished, not the parents.
Parents raise their children and play a major role in the decisions they make, but I would argue that they shouldn’t be held responsible for wrongful acts of their children that are done without their assistance, knowledge or negligence. Everyone, including children, should be responsible for his or her own actions — no one else’s.
