A bit extreme?

I heard this story on talkback over the weekend; the presenter was a bit wishy-washy on the thing, giving us some half-assed excuse that his father allowed him a few beers at his own 16th birthday party. In my opinion, yeah it’s a tad extreme, 2 years in jail, but maybe this is what takes to get the message through to folks out there, under-age drinking is not on, supervised or not. Teens are not allowed to drive on public roads either, supervised or not, so tough.
The drinking age in the United States is 21, but Elisa Kelly, 42, and George Robinson, 52, decided to buy alcohol for their son Ryan's party, which was attended by about 30 people between 12 and 18 years old, on August 16, 2002.

Concerned that the teenagers would drink without supervision, the parents said they had bought alcohol with the understanding that the teens would spend the night at their place and collected half a dozen car keys to prevent drunk-driving. After receiving three calls reporting possible underage drinking, police broke up the party near Charlottesville, Virginia, and arrested Kelly and Robinson.

The parents, who have since divorced, were sentenced to four years and six months in prison - six months for each of the nine teenagers who were found to have “measurable levels” of alcohol in their system. Half the sentence was suspended. Robinson and Kelly had appealed the sentence all the way up to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear their case on May 21. Source.
Another question was, would this happen here in Australia, that they’d be sentenced to 2 years in jail? Oh please, we struggle to beat murderers and pedophiles with the wet lettuce; out here police are called to break up birthday parties that turn into mini coups. Let me know if you’ve ever heard of parents being sent to jail for giving their kids booze here in Australia. Perhaps we should follow the Americans, then we might get some adults to stop carrying on in drunken states on our streets, ending up in hospital and sending the bill to the rest of us. What say you?

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