Since pop-up parties inspired and encouraged by platforms like TikTok have caused more and more disruptions at the Jersey Shore and elsewhere, there’s been an increasing call for punishing parents. It’s an understandable reaction.
For minors to do these things, they must be going unsupervised and undisciplined at home.
Parents must be no-shows in their lives. If the parent is made to pay fines for what the kid does, and possibly even spends a few nights in jail, only then will the parent start doing the job they should have been doing all along.
Now there’s a New Jersey town that has adopted an ordinance that says a parent can pay a maximum $2,000 fine and potentially spend 90 days in jail if their child won’t stop unruly behavior.
Gloucester Township passed the law on July 28. It details 28 offenses a child can commit for which the parent could pay the price. They cover things from felonies to loitering to breaking curfew.
Gloucester isn’t the first town to do such a thing.
It’s the kind of thing law and order guys like gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli have embraced. While I support his candidacy and also his position on treating juvenile offenders more like offenders and less like juveniles when it comes to the soft approach adopted in recent years, I don’t support holding parents criminally accountable.
He’s right when he points out it was handcuffing our police when the Murphy administration told them they could not report underage kids caught drinking alcohol or smoking weed to their parents. But fining and locking up parents over sins committed by their children is misguided…