I was asked by a friend to do a short piece on this topic "Do you think that the parents of those rioters in the UK riots who are under 18 should be accountable for the actions of their children?" Here is my thoughts on this question.

When I started to write this I initially did a search on the meaning of the word accountability, not because I didn't know the meaning of the word, just to certify the associated words, i.e accountable is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms.

I believe the parents of those rioters who are under eighteen do have a form of accountability in regarding what their children were involved with during the riots, but as to their blameworthiness, or answer-ability, I would have to say their accountability can only be leveled to the extent of their ability to prevent the actions of their children, in other words to make them liable for the actions of their children would depend on the circumstance, for example if a child kills someone, because of a playground argument, the parent of that child would not be expected to go to jail for the crime of murder, but their parenting skills would be looked at and people could look at them as bad parents, but this does not make them fully accountable for the actions of their child because the parents have not instigated the actions of their children, it reminds me of the school bully who bullies a child into committing suicide, is the parent of the child who has taken their own life accountable for the action of that child? No, in most circumstances society would feel pity for that child and also the parents of the child who has taken their own life, and the blame would usually fall on the bully and the bully's parents, but are the bully's parents to blame for their child being a bully if they as parents have done nothing that would make a child behave in this manner? In most cases the answer would be no.

In many of these circumstances the bullied child will not tell their parents what they are going through because they do not want to make a big deal about it or worry their parents, this could be said of how many of the youth who feel that society is bullying them feel, with many of the youth being constantly harassed by police, and not only the lack of jobs but the lack of employees who will employ them even if their is a job on offer regardless of their ability or qualifications, in other words the subliminal bullying that they face on a daily basis may be to blame for this sociological and psychological breakdown of communications that led to the rioting in the UK. I would say that the structure of society with regards to many of these children is exclusive rather than inclusive, and the accountability factor has to be brought into play at a much earlier stage in the lives of these children.

We have a scenario where many people would not want the likes of these children in their offices or places of work much less as employees of many of the companies or businesses that these youth look to as their way out of poverty, but still these youth are educated to be staff and to aim to be employees of these company's that in many circumstances want nothing to do with them. At this juncture I would say that a portion of accountability has to be placed at the door of the education system, whilst not saying that these children are not being educated, they are not being taught how to be bosses, they are being taught how to be staff of companies who do not want them as employees, in other words they are being taught how to beg for something that will seldom be given. Because of these factors, the children, with their lack of worldly experience, resort to being frustrated, sad, and confused about the best way forwards in life. Subconsciously they begin to blame themselves for the situations that they face on a daily basis, this self hate leads to gangs of youth who feel that society has pushed them away, which in turn causes self hate because they look at themselves and see an upstanding citizen but they are aware that society in general looks at them from a completely opposite perspective. Within this view point the child can almost be brainwashed into thinking, believing, and behaving in a manner, where hate of self will make society accept them and not only that, hate of anything that resembles self will make them sociologically accepted, thus area code wars etc.

All of these psychological conscious or subconscious behaviors begin to surface and are played out in the estates and on our streets. From this position our perspective of accountability, is looking at the situation from more of a birds eye view, where we see a time line and how encounters with other peoples sociological stereo typical time lines intersect and effect the time lines of these children. Many of the children who we saw rioting have changeable time lines, where as many of those in society who see these children as trouble, have fixed time lines, what I mean by this is that with these children being educated and taught to only find a job and not work for themselves gives many of the people who have been educated to own businesses and be bosses the ability and power to change the time line of these children, whether to see and promote them as a generation of losers or give them jobs and promote them, they have the ability to change the child's time line, whereas the children have little if any chance of changing their own time line because they have simply not been taught to do this and even if they attempt to do this it is looked upon as doing something that they should not do.

Henceforth the children feel frustrated, sad and disillusioned and because they feel they have no way to change their own time lines, they attempt to carry out some kind of change by rioting. From this view point I believe accountability can be placed on the shoulders of those who benefit from the inability of these children to control their own destiny and be seen as upstanding, progressive citizens.