Caporegime
There's a couple things, here.
1. Recently society has decided that parents must not smack their kids, and that it should be considered assault as it would were the recipient an adult.
2. Because of 1, then any instance of a child physically bullying another child must also be assault, purely for consistency. You can't criminalise smacking and then allow kids hitting each other, as it would make no sense. It's either assault or it's not.
So it follows then that you have to start going after kids with assault charges. On the one hand, they aren't fully mentally developed, but on the other hand, they do know how to follow rules and act in their own self-interest, from quite a young age.
Do you go after the parents or the kids themselves?
Some kids are ****holes because their parents are ****holes, I think we all know kids like this from our own childhoods. So perhaps going after the parents is the way forwards. But then maybe not, because abusive adults aren't all that likely to change their ways. Normally the best you can hope for is that karma bites them in the ass, hard.
And we know what taking kids away from their biological parents is a touchy subject. But seriously, how many ****hole kids don't have at least one ****hole parent?
You just plucked up something I am not even talking about - who said anything about hitting children as punishment?
There is actually only 1 thing here. Consequences from Actions. As I said, I will leave the judge for the actual consequence.
The kid will get his or her consequences for their actions, 10 years behind bars and whatnot, which also will be the punishment for the parent in itself.