BATON ROUGE – The House advanced a bill Monday that would hold parents liable for fines of up to $5,000 for threats called into schools by their children.
House Bill 137, authored by Rep. Mike Johnson, R-Pineville, passed 71-26 amid vigorous debate. Children under the age of 14 convicted of making a school threat would face a mental examination, up to 12 months of probation or six months in juvenile detention and mandated participation in the Back on Track Youth Pilot Program.
“We want to make our schools as safe as we possibly can,” Johnson said.
The bill increases parental accountability, Johnson said, and would serve as a deterrent for both children and adults who enact threats against schools. In the case of children, the extent of a parent’s knowledge about their child’s threat to a school would be at the discretion of the courts.
“I think it’s a dangerous precedent to make a parent liable for something the child does outside the parent having done anything to contribute to or encourage the child to do this” said Rep. Troy Carter, D-New Orleans.
Also on Monday, a bill adding to the list of controlled substances advanced unanimously. House Bill 152, under Rep. Shane Mack, R-Livingston, is an annual update to the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, a state legal framework that classifies and criminalizes substances deemed as a threat to the community.
The bill would add 13 opioids, including four types of fentanyl, to the list of controlled substances. The addition of those opioids was prompted by data compiled by the State Police Crime Lab and the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy.
Sentencing in the criminal justice system prompted a brief floor discussion.
A bill by Rep. Mandie Landry’s, D-New Orleans, would allow incarcerated individuals to earn good time if they earn an associate’s degree while in prison. Landry said the bill, which passed 95-0, was filed at the request of the Department of Corrections.
The present law allows incarcerated individuals to earn a 90-day sentence reduction should they earn a bachelor’s degree. Landry’s bill would extend that opportunity for those who earn an associate’s degree.
The bill advances the Department of Public Safety and Corrections’ agenda for “treatment, vocational and rehabilitation programming.”
“It has proven to be quite a popular bill,” Landry said.
