You are Your Child’s Keeper: People v. Crumbley Opens the Door to Parental Criminal Liability

In the spring of 2024, James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents to Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter after their son shot and killed four Oxford High School classmates. This decision marks the first time in the history of the United States that the parents of a school shooter have been charged criminally for contributing to the death of the shooting victims, and comes in the midst of an era where our nation is wracked by gun violence. In the quarter century since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, a generation of children have lived under the threat of school-related gun violence. School shootings have risen substantially in frequency in the last twenty-five years. From 1997 to 2022, there were 1,453 school shootings. More than half of those—794—occurred from 2017 to 2022. In 2023, the United States saw 346 school shootings, averaging out to nearly one per day. As the frequency of school shootings has increased, the topics of gun violence and juvenile delinquency have been cyclically present in the media, election cycles, and proposed legislation. Research has raised a variety of solutions to preventing school shootings—including stricter gun laws, community programming around gun safety, and increased funding for mental health interventions. However, amid these tragic events, fingers often point not toward lawmakers or school and community administrators, but toward the parents of the attacker.