Professor Bala Talks to The Guardian About Prosecuting Parents of School Shooters

Professor Nila Bala commented in a May 14 story in The Guardian centered on parents being prosecuted in school shootings perpetrated by their children. 

The story mentions the murder conviction earlier this year of a Georgia father whose son killed four people and the groundbreaking 2024 case of a Michigan couple convicted of involuntary manslaughter in their son’s deadly shooting.

In such instances, “We are absolving the state and saying that if parents have all this control over their kids, then they also have all this liability when things go wrong,” Bala told The Guardian. But this focus on parents shouldn’t distract from the shortcomings of the U.S. mental healthcare infrastructure, Bala said.

Nila Bala is a scholar of children’s rights, criminal law, and evidence. Her work examines how law structures childhood, particularly through criminal law, emerging technologies, and systems of surveillance and punishment. At King Hall, she teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and Children and the Law.