In 2024, the parents of Ethan Crumbley were sentenced to 10-15 years in prison after Ethan fatally shot four students at his high school in Michigan with a gun his parents gave him as a Christmas gift. This book takes up a compelling issue of increasing importance: should we punish parents for their children’s crimes? The Crumbley case is the first in which parents were held criminally responsible when their child committed a school shooting, and other prosecutions of parents are now taking place in its footsteps. Drawing on the author’s prior work on why we punish, this work encourages readers to think critically about when it is and isn’t appropriate to hold parents responsible. By drawing on numerous cases in the civil and criminal law that assess parental responsibility for harm that came to their children, or for harm their children inflicted on others, the book provides guidelines for determining parental culpability, guidelines that can limit the arbitrary exercise of discretion and counteract hindsight bias. The work will be of interest to students, academics and researchers working in the areas of Law, Criminal Justice, Political Science/Political Theory, Philosophy and Sociology.

Mark Tunick is Professor of Political Science and teaches political theory and constitutional law at the Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University, USA.