I do agree with parents being liable as it is their responsibility to know what their children are up to and to teach them what is right and wrong. I know many broken homes tend to end up with no father figure for the kids but that is no excuse. Parents in many cases are as bad as their unruly disrespectful kids who have never been disciplined so they do whatever they want. Just because you are 14 or 15 it does not give you the right to commit crime and there needs to be consequences.

I caught a 12 year old kid who had stolen a lady's handbag and threw him over my shoulder and took him back to the lady who now had the police in attendance. People were shouting at me to let him go and he was crying and begging to be released ,but he had no chance. He was known to the cops for previous crimes and the parents should be handling this and not up to the likes of everyone else dealing with this low life.

In the old days he would have been given 6 of the best at the police station and ended up in juvenile detention if he never learned his lesson. Corporal punishment is good in some instances because these kids need to learn one way or the other. The soft soft approach is clearly failing and the being cruel to be kind could actually work in some cases.