Mums and dads will be forced to go to parenting classes if their children keep committing crimes in plans announced by Labour this morning.
Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed has pledged to help parents “take responsibility for tackling the behaviour of their own children”.
In a speech at Middle Temple in London, the Labour minister said: “We will expand the use of parenting orders so the courts can require parents of persistent young offenders to attend parenting classes.
“We will support parents to steer their children’s lives back on track before the crime in a young life becomes a life of crime.
“Anti-social behaviour will be met with consequences, because we know how damaging it is for communities that feel powerless in the face of it.”
Speaking to journalists after the speech, he added: "The important point is that if you're a parent and your kid is repeatedly committing anti-social behaviour or low level offending, you need first of all to take responsibility as a parent for the behaviour of your kids, but you may also need support and help to get control of them.
"I've spoken to parents in my constituency and elsewhere who are genuinely at their wits' end because they don't know how to get back control of their kids and their fear is this low level offending that they're engaged in will lead on to more serious offending later in life and they're on a path that takes them to prison - a really, really bleak future for them, as well as all the crime that they would commit.
"So giving them parenting lessons. can help them get back control of their kids and steer them away from a life of crime."
He said they introduced parenting support for parents "whose kids were running out of control" in the mid-noughties when he was leader of Lambeth Council.
"There's a programme called HomeStart, which really worked well in that locality. It trains up parents who have successfully parented their kids in an area to support parents who are struggling.
"And the struggling parents are quite often more likely to accept support from a family they know has experienced their own life. So it works. I've seen it work. We want to roll that out across the whole country," he said.
Parenting orders already exist in some capacity but Labour says the system is failing to enforce them properly.
The move is part of a package of commitments to “tackle the scourge of anti-social behaviour”.
Mr Reed also outlined plans for fly-tippers to be fined and forced to clear up rubbish they have dumped in established clean-up squads.
According to the latest Home Office figures, there were 1.1million incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded by police last year - more than 3,000 incidents a day.
The Labour MP for Croydon North attacked the Conservatives for “breaking our country” as he blasted that the “criminal justice system is broken from end to end”.
He said we need to “prevent crime” by recognising “the impact of damaging experiences in early childhood on lifelong offending”, as he vowed to create “the world’s first trauma-informed criminal justice system”.
Acknowledging Tony Blair’s pledge to be “‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” 30 years ago, Mr Reed said: “He was right. But it’s time to update that approach to fit the modern world.”
He went on: “Today, we have a far better understanding of the science of trauma. How a young mind damaged by abuse or neglect in childhood can lead to criminal behaviour in adolescence and adulthood.
“Whether it’s a child growing up with a drug-addicted parent unable to offer the stability, boundaries and love they need. Or a child witnessing or even the victim of violent or sexual abuse in their home that normalises aggression in their mind.
“That trauma can take hold and find expression later in life in criminal behaviour that puts other people and their communities in danger.
“The next Labour government will harness this learning to shape the world’s first trauma-informed criminal justice system.
“That means tackling trauma early in life, in courts, in prisons, in probation services because if we break the cycle of crime we can better protect the public.”
The Shadow Justice Secretary also pledged to increase efforts to increase diversity, saying it “can’t be right” that the UK’s highest court currently has only one woman serving on it and has never had a judge from an ethnic minority.
He said: “We must also end racial disproportionality that runs through the justice system and leads minority groups to feel that it does not treat them fairly.
“Labour will implement all remaining recommendations of the Lammy Review.”
