Rick LaChapelle lives in Lewiston.

As Lewiston leaders hold emergency city council sessions and fill high school auditoriums to debate juvenile curfews, surveillance drones and police staffing shortages, our community continues to overlook the structural rot at the center of the ongoing youth violence crisis.

With 12 of our city’s 19 shootings this year involving minors — including children as young as 14 facing murder conspiracy charges — it is painfully clear that we are trying to patch a catastrophic dam failure with Scotch tape.

Curfews and increased street patrols can monitor our sidewalks and make them safer, and we must now consider all, but they cannot replace the foundational bedrock of a safe society: proactive, consistent parental discipline.

Accountability is a language that must be taught from birth. It is a severe mistake to assume that a child will suddenly respect the rule of law at age 14 if they were never taught to respect basic boundaries at age 4. When parents fail to implement clear rules and immediate, constructive consequences early in childhood, they inadvertently teach a dangerous lesson: that authority is negotiable, rules are suggestions and real world consequences do not exist.

By the time a child reaches adolescence, this lack of early grounding transforms from ordinary behavioral defiance into community­-shattering violence. You simply cannot expect a teenager to respect the laws of the state of Maine or act in a civil way if they were never taught to respect the boundaries of their own living room.

For the youth who have already missed this early foundation and are currently driving the crime wave on our streets, the city must stop leaning on a soft, cyclical juvenile justice approach that lets repeat offenders right back onto Pierce and Bartlett streets.

Compassion without accountability is enabling. If proper discipline was not established at home from birth, the legal system must step in to deliver certain, unyielding consequences now. This is not about advocating abuse or cruelty; it is about reality. If a teenager faces no definitive, tangible fallout for bringing a firearm into our neighborhoods, the delusion of total impunity is reinforced, escalating their behavior until a life is lost or even a life of crime becomes inevitable.

Please keep in mind, however, if we are to expect parental responsibility, we must acknowledge that many well-meaning local parents are completely overwhelmed and do not know how to implement constructive boundaries. It is not enough to blame families; we must actively instruct them.

Lewiston’s civic budget should pivot away from funding temporary after-school distractions and toward institutionalizing robust, mandatory parent-instruction frameworks tied to community aid and school systems. True parental instruction must move past vague advice and focus on concrete, actionable strategies.

First, parents must be taught how to establish explicit, non-negotiable household rules regarding curfews, internet use and peer associations, etc. Second, they must learn the art of immediate, predictable fallout. If a child breaks a rule, the household consequence — whether it is the immediate loss of a smartphone, grounding or the withholding of privileges — must drop down instantly. Delayed discipline is discarded discipline. If the consequence does not follow the action immediately, the boundary becomes meaningless to a child. Finally, instruction must emphasize active monitoring.

Parents must be given the confidence and the mandate to know exactly where their children are, who they are with, and to actively check their rooms and belongings for contraband, and no government agency should insinuate that this is not a parental right. We must stop treating parents like helpless bystanders in their children’s lives.

Finally, as a community, we seem to find millions and millions of dollars to provide all necessities for so-called “newcomers.” We must reclaim some of this money and prioritize our existing culture and the historical parenting we must provide.

The city council can pass all the ordinances it wants, and the police department can patrol Kennedy Park around the clock, but true public safety in Lewiston will never be won by treating only the symptoms. It will be won behind closed doors, with parents reclaiming their primary role as the first line of discipline and instilling boundaries from the cradle.

Doing all of these things will save us tons of future tax dollars, save our youth and restore civility at all levels to Lewiston.