The Age of Criminalizing Children

[Fireweed247]

I remember when I was in school, misbehaving children received a visit to the principal´s office, detention, in-house or off grounds suspension, but now schools have police or "safety" officers on the grounds, quick to view our kids as hardened criminals...

Two 4-year-old boys were removed from a preschool class and handcuffed by the school safety officer for refusing to take a nap. The boys said the officer told them "You know what happens when you don't go to sleep in there? . . . When you go to jail, you're not going to have no fun, no TV, no toys." The parents of the boys are suing the city. New York Post

A 6-year-old girl was arrested on charges of disruption of a school function, battery on school employees (a felony), and resisting arrest for throwing a temper tantrum in class. The child was taken to the county jail, fingerprinted and had a mug shot taken. The chief of police stated, "Those are the normal procedures for anyone who is arrested." The battered school employee was left with a red mark. Welcome to Pottersville

A 5-year-old boy with speech problems and asthma was handcuffed by a school safety officer for throwing a temper tantrum in class. School officials refused to turn the child over to his baby sitter who had rushed to the scene and sent the boy to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. WCBSTV

The parents of an 11-year-old disabled boy filed notice of claim as a preclude to a lawsuit that their child´s civil rights were violated by a school security guard who handcuffed him on the playground. The boy, who has a rare genetic disorder and has learning issues, had picked up a small stone to add to his collection of "lucky rocks", when his aide told him to put it down. The boy was then thrown to the ground and handcuffed behind his back, dislodging his feeding tube. After the incident, the principal suspended the child for a day for "aggressive behavior toward himself and staff members." FOX News

An 11-year-old boy spent 72 hours in a juvenile jail for accidentally shooting another student with a slingshot made of a stretchy balloon, a milk cap and rubber bands. The sixth grader was arrested on second-degree felony charges of shooting or throwing a deadly missile. The boy claimed he shot a plastic pellet into his locker and it ricocheted hitting a classmate, leaving a small welt on injured child´s chest. Information Liberation

And if we can stand anymore, a 13-year-old boy was arrested on battery charges for throwing a piece of a broken pencil at children who were calling him names, the intended target ducked and the pencil piece hit another child in the back of the head. TC Palm A 12-year-old boy was arrested and charged with disruption of an educational institution for stomping in a puddle and spraying his classmates. Court TV

A 13-year-old girl was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and the making of graffiti for writing the word "okay" on her school desk. WCBSTV And a 12-year-old autistic boy was arrested and charged with a felony for grabbing a teacher´s arm. FOX Gulf Coast

links/more here
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/55204

[Jed Dilligan]

1. The system loves to get 'em young,

because when it gets 'em young, more times than not it gets them forever.

[Echo In Light]

14. Gotta run a high percentage of the "surplus" populace through the system

[Occulus]

20. And, kids in school have no rights

:popcorn:

[DiverDave]

21. Kids have NO rights

Let some fascist fuck do that to my kids, a lawsuit ain't the only thing that they would need to worry about.

Throwing kids down and handcuffing 6 year olds is SICK, and god help the asshole that does it to mine.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. One way for the 2% to control the other 98%

you know...the riff-raff :eyes:

[bobthedrummer]

3. Hey kids, WAKE UP! IT'S NAZI PARTY TIME!!!

:party: :bounce: :party: :banghead: :party: :hide:

[SeattleGirl]

4. Good gawd! I bet many of us on this board would have been

thrown into prison as a child, if those "rules" had been in effect then.

I have a BETTER idea. Let's arrest these assholes and throw THEM in jail, and let the kids be kids.

[Swamp Rat]

5. I would have received the death penalty by age 6.

:eyes:

[SeattleGirl]

7. I think if some of the crazies who make these idiotic rules

would be just fine with that. x(

[Posteritatis]

6. I'm glad I got out when I did

I graduated the year that Columbine happened. Being one or two years younger would've sucked even more than the experience I had did.

[reggie the dog]

12. I graduated high school in 1997.

I reveived my MA in 2003 and left the USA.

[reggie the dog]

11. I would have gone to jail many times

I actually had punched kids when they made fun of me while I was 7 or 8. I also threw a basketball at kids making fun of me when I was 10. Once while having a snowball fight I accidentally hit a recess monitor. She gave me time out for 5 minutes but let me go when I told her I was sorry and that I was not aiming at her. She thought it was normal to have a snowball fight during the winter. I was 8 years old.

[xmas74]

18. Jr high and high school wouldn't

have been the same for me if I wasn't fighting in the hallways, the parking lot, the gym, the locker room or the girls' room.

What does my daughter have to look forward to in her future?

[Sanctified]

8. Well Public Schools have a tendancy to reflect the Government that Runs them. n/t

[Echo In Light]

15. And that means "$ecurity!"

[Fireweed247]

22. exactly why I believe in Homeschooling!

n/t

[Greyhound]

9. K & R # 5

Unfrickingbelievable.
:kick: & R

[better tomorrow]

10. I was teaching 5th grade and was......

thrown into a steel door and jammed against it when a 10 year old student (a girl) shoved the door because a bi-racial boy who was trying to be nice and was holding it open for me and she didn't like the boy so she shoved him.

I sufferred a torn rotator cuff with surgery and a brain injury, was placed on permanent disability, and awarded a settlement by the school board with their apologies.

The girl didn't even receive detention but the boy did even though I told them he was not at fault. Go figure!

[Firespirit]

13. It's not just scarring, either

This fascist shit is on these kids' records forever.

Whenever they go to college, apply for a job, or anything, this crap will be there.

The one decent thing in this is that the parents, at least, object to it.

I hope the kids don't grow up thinking that this disgusting behavior is acceptable in America, but I'm all too afraid that that's the whole point -- condition kids for life in a dictatorship, so they expect nothing better.

[DCKit]

16. Here I thought all those crazy Republic fundamentalists were homeschooling...

so they could indoctrinate their kids under direct supervision and it turns out they are only protecting them from even crazier Republic fundamentalist fascists.

Go figure.

[Fireweed247]

19. Crazy Republicans aren't the only ones homeschooling

The movement was started by the intelligent people in the 60's who realized the government was indoctrinating and dumbing down the children. The situation is even worse now, with metal detectors and this kind of bullshit. They are preparing them for the police state, and when we all die off, our society will not know any different.

When the first thing in office that Bush does is 'help' education with the no child left behind crapola, that should be enough to make anyone wonder about the direction of our public institutions.

[Snarkturian Clone]

17. Sounds fishy to me.

Two sentence versions of a story are ALWAYS leaving something out. I work at an inner city school and our kids have done MUCH MUCH worse things than described above without such harsh consequences. The only time the school has called police have been incidents involving drugs or threats to/from kids from other schools.

With these stories I'm assuming that either there's more to each story that isn't being told or someone in charge in each of those incidents has made a VERY bad decision.

[Jed Dilligan]

23. If it's a fact, there's no grey area

when it comes to handcuffing 4 year olds and threatening them with incarceration.

[Snarkturian Clone]

27. You missed the end of my last sentence.

someone in charge in each of those incidents has made a VERY bad decision

...which is the most likely reason for these dumbass punishments. Someone in charge was waaay over-zealous in their punishment. I was just trying to make the point that there are things we do not know about all these stories so it makes it hard to judge them completely.

[Jed Dilligan]

28. I didn't miss it, I think that for some, if not all of these incidents,

unless they are just blatantly fabricated, there is no left-out fact that could possibly mitigate the behavior of the people in charge. There is no situation in which shackling a toddler is the correct course of action.

[TheMightyFavog]

24. I graduated in '98.

My rural school district, in rural Northeast Wisconsin had a liaison officer from the County Sheriff's Department. He wasn't there full time, he taught the D.A.R.E. Class to the 6th graders, Arranged and police visits to the grade school, talked about the perils of reckless driving to the Driver's Ed Class, and did presentations on police procedure for the Socail Problems class at the high school. That's about it. Aside from some very serious offenses (Like the one kid who went on a rampage and snapped all the newly planted trees in the nature center in two, and an instance of a kid who had been expelled trespassing on school property) The cops really didn't get involved much at school. Pretty well much all discipline was taken care of internally.

I keep looking at all of these incidents, and wonder, why get the cops involved? Why not simply handle this internally?

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

25. Uggg Homeschoolers have it right..

Some reasons for this crap:

1) Parents who don't throw down the hammer on their kids for misbehaving. If I had hit my teacher at the age of 5-6 I would have gotten a time out and my mother would have gotten a call, when I got home I would have got a real punishment if not a spanking (I did not get too many of those) I would have toys and or play time taken away (and added chores)... My wife would have had to stand in a corner holding up books. Today a parent will blame the teacher for their kids misbehavior..

2) Teachers who think kids should be little adults guess what 5 year olds have tantrums and 11 year olds use make shift slingshots....

3) Administrations who handcuff teachers from reasonable discipline...

[aikoaiko]

26. I really don;t understand this phenomenon --- educators, educational adminstrators lean left

These are our people -- why have we created this BS zero-tolerance.

[GoneOffShore]

29. Yes but parents call for "Zero Tolerance" policies

It's the law of unintended consequences working overtime.