Detroit is taking a new approach to hold parents accountable for the actions of their children. Legislation is being drafted to allow parents to be jailed if they continually miss conferences that teachers have planned. Wayne County prosecutor Kyn Worthy hopes to present the idea to county commissioners in August and push for their approval on the issue.
Worthy explains that she is constantly seeing younger and younger serious offenders and hope to place pressure on the parents to help turn around the problem. When a 12 year old Demarco Harris allegedly killed a woman on the streets of Detroit police went to the child’s home hoping to get information from the parents. The parents told police they had no idea where the child was. Worthy points to this case as a prime example of why the parent needs to be held accountable. Harris’ teachers had repeatedly requested meetings with his parents about his academic and attendance problems but they rarely attended.
With Detroit’s high unemployment, poverty and poor school performance many believe Worthy’s idea is the type of “out of the box” thinking that is needed to help turn around the sagging metropolitan area. If it prove successful Worthy already has her eye on trying to make it into a statewide piece of legislation.
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