Replies

>Parents who cannot handle an unruly or mentally disturbed child should have the child institutionalized<

I certainly agree with that statement.

>failure to do so means that the parents are responsible for any criminal acts committed by the child.<

That logicallly follows, however, there may be extenuating circumstances. In Cho’s case, he was an adult. He had been institutionalized, but was released.
In Edward’s case, we are talking about a minor, so the parents are still in control, ie: responsible. He was arrested, then released by the state. In my view, the parents should not have bailed him out. Therefore any harm the boy incurs, his parents should answer to.

I agree that parents are off the hook once a child reaches adulthood. However, if the parents of the Columbine killers had been prosecuted for murder (as they should have been), the parents of other “troubled” children would have been in some hurry to have their monsters committed. After all, a “troubled” child is like a time bomb with an unknown setting: there is no guarantee that the child will be an adult before something bad happens. Perhaps Cho would have been locked up in a happy farm on a steady diet of Thorazine.

I would agree with that. The choice to bond him out makes them entirely responsible. Fortunately the courts have acted responsibly and had him incarcerated without bail.

As to the parents decision to bond him out - the origins of these kinds of issues are hard to pin point but someone else has already stated this could be purely biological. Unfortunately a solid understanding of how the brain works to impact people’s psychological and emotional states is just now permeating pop culture and it has a long way to go. ADD for example - many people still believe it’s a bunch of hogwash but it’s not. People want to form moral evaluations and judgements about the individual and write them off without understanding the actual factors at play in circumstances.

it’s too easy to sit back and judge and unfortunately while such judgements may be expedient for the limitation of the damage done by specific individuals in the immediate future it does little to help society understand, face and appropriately deal those who will come along in the future. Ignorance is not bliss - it’s a gaurantee that UTVA will happen again.