Informed Opinions on Today’s Topics : Are the Parents Responsible for Kids’ Graffiti?

The problem of graffiti in the San Fernando Valley is not a new one, but it appears to be growing. Frustrated property owners, business owners and community leaders are desperate to stem the tagging epidemic and while many citizens do their part by participating in graffiti removal brigades or Neighborhood Watch committees, attacking the problem at its roots seems to be difficult if not impossible. One proposal, which has been adopted by many communities in Orange County and elsewhere, is holding parents responsible when their kids are caught tagging.

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Should the parents of minors caught tagging be held responsible for the cost of cleaning up the vandalism?

Ralph Enderle, a real estate agent and leader of an anti-graffiti task force in Calabasas:

“Yes. The parents should be responsible not only for the financial cost but they should also be, along with their children, sentenced to community service work as a result of their children’s destruction of personal and public property. Just the sheer financial aspect is that one child can go out with a $1 can of spray-paint and cause thousands of dollars worth of damage. You have to get the parents and their children involved in community service work. If they had to go back out and hoe weeds, paint and do work like that for 60 hours or so, the parents might care what the kids do and might supervise them better.”

Nancy Hoffman, executive director of the Mid San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce:

“The chamber has taken no official position on the issue, but the general consensus has been that the parents need to be held responsible for the damage and the cleanup. The parents need to be responsible for their children’s actions because they’re minors. The extent of that is up to the courts and it might even be better if they’re taken on a case-by-case basis. One kid could be doing it just to get back at the parents. They might not be gang taggers. Another kid could just really be involved in that type of crime.”

Tom Hilborn, president of the Reseda Chamber of Commerce:

“Yes. In my opinion they should be held accountable and the reason for that is that they do have a responsibility to society to raise their children in a manner that would not be destructive to society. So I do think there is some accountability there. In today’s society almost everybody just says it’s somebody else’s fault.

James Barnes of Encino, defense attorney:

“The incidence of tagging will not be reduced by imposing financial costs of cleanup on parents of taggers. Taggers are rarely caught. The act of tagging is territorial, anti-authoritarian and not the type of conduct readily subject to control by parents. Moreover, to impose potentially large cleanup costs on economically distressed families could cause family members to go hungry or lose the ability to provide shelter. The concept sounds good, but it has the ring of a political quick-fix which will have no real effect on the behavior, but would allow politicians to say they’re doing something about the tagging problem.”

James McWilliams, president of the California Public Defenders Assn.:

“Right now, the parents do pick up a lot of liability out of Juvenile Court. For example if a public defender is provided to the minor, the parents will be held financially responsible. It gets back to your basic sense of morality and responsibility. It’s one thing when your 5-year-old or 7-year-old breaks the neighbor’s window, but a lot of the kids doing graffiti are realistically beyond the control of their parents. A lot of times the parents of the kids we’re talking about are in no position to pay any significant bill and are unrepresented in the juvenile proceedings.”