Rationale

A vast majority of the participants at our Gang Summit believes that family intervention must take place during the early stages of a new offenders criminal development in order to be effective.  They feel that parents must be held accountable and must also be given the information necessary to deal with their at-risk child.

Bill

The AGPAA bill seeks to help strengthen families by teach parenting skills. It calls for informing the parents of available assistance in dealing with teen problems, requiring accountability from parents, and helping the judicial system identify seriously abusive parents for potential intervention. The AGPAA would require "judges" in the juvenile system to send parents of convicted first-time violent offenders and give them the option to send other parents of at-risk defendants in their jurisdiction to special "Ant-Gang Violence Parenting Classes." In cases where the judge feels that the parents may not need the classes, or if the judge feels that severe parental problems exist, the bill would allow judges to ask its probation officers to visit the home and make recommendations about whether the classes are necessary. Existing law may already allow the judge to intervene in other ways when finding extraordinary circumstances such as child abuse exist.   The bill should also allow judges to charge the parents with contempt if parents fail to meet the obligations of this law if necessary.  AGPA should also establish a means to develop the curriculum for these parenting classes which should include, but not be limited to, teaching parents how to identify gang and drug activity in their kids, teaching parents how to communicate with adolescents, giving parents an overview and the contact names, numbers and locations for pertinent supporting agencies and organizations for intervention, educational support, job training and positive recreational activities and teaching parents the fines and lengths or incarceration which their children will be subjected to if convicted of further crimes, and also the potential penalties to parents for aiding and abetting crime in their own children. The program should be funded by requiring parents to pay for the classes but also establish an alternative means for the fees to be paid (one area being looked into is joint community service for the child and the parent.)  It should serve as both an informational/educational service and a deterrent by requiring their time and fees.

Assembly Member Mendoza Quotes

“If you get commit a moving violation we require driving classes, if you're convicted of DUI, you're sent to anti-dependency classes.  But when someone's kid commits violent crime, the parent isn't held accountable in any way. That's got to stop. We need to help parents take back control of their kids by giving them the tools necessary to become better parents and find help for their children. One solid way to do that is to require the parents of violent juvenile offenders, and other at-risk juvenile offenders to take parenting classes and pay for them.”

“There are good parents whose kids -for some other reason- commit violent crimes, the AGPA bill allows judges and probation officers to exempt those families. There are many parents who want to keep their kids away from gangs but don't know who to turn to for help and  there are also parents who's own dependencies and other problems are so severe that they themselves are to blame for the kids seeking gangs affiliation as the only family-type support groups known to the kids.  We need to break the cycle of gang activity in families and stop the revolving door of juvenile gang-members going in and out of jail. The Anti-Gang Parental Accountability Bill is a great first step because it's flexible enough for all family situations.”