New bill would hold parents accountable for the crimes of their children

In the wake of last week’s violent beating of an Arab teen by several Jewish youths in Jerusalem, an existing law that places responsibility for children’s misdeeds on their parents is likely to be expanded.

East Jerusalem resident Jamal Julani, 17, nearly died after he was brutally beaten in downtown Jerusalem last week. Eight suspects, seven of them minors, have been arrested so far in connection with the incident. Julani was released from the hospital on Thursday.

MK Haim Katz (Likud), chairman of the Knesset Labor, Welfare and Health Committee, has initiated a bill which, if passed, would hold parents of minors criminally responsible for crimes in which their children are implicated, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Thursday.

A law currently in effect states that if a minor is caught in possession of a sharp object, such as a knife, the parents of that child can be fined as much as NIS 21,000 (approx $5,000) or serve up to a year in prison. Katz is essentially proposing a wider-reaching extension of that law that would also mandate criminal charges for parents of minors involved in cases of violence or other criminal activity. According to the terms of Katz’s initiative, parents would be charged in cases where it could be established that they could have conceivably prevented the crime had they supervised their children more strictly.

According to Yedioth, one aspect of the bill still under discussion in the Knesset is the age of the children for whom parents would bear criminal responsibility. Some MKs believe that the law should apply to all minors — that is, children up to the age of 18 — while others say that it should only apply to children up to the age of 16.

Five of the seven minors currently in custody for last week’s beating are under the age of 16.

Should the bill be legislated, the more difficult legal challenge would be to determine specific guidelines for what constitutes parental negligence, as opposed to what is not reasonably within the parents’ control.

“We cannot abide a situation where the streets of Israel turn into a dangerous place just because parents are unaware of what their children are up to,” Katz told Yedioth. “After the horrible incident in Jerusalem, we need a… comprehensive, aggressive solution to eradicate violence.”

Last week’s attack drew widespread condemnation from Israel’s leaders — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres, Vice Prime Moshe Ya’alon and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat — as well as the US State Department.

Gabe Fisher contributed to this report.