Nobody likes to be bullied, but I’m sure at one time or another we were all pushed around in school at some point. But that doesn’t mean we need to make bullies into criminals, as many bullies were bullied themselves, and as a defense mechanism they became bullies so no one would push them around anymore.
After a while they got really good at intimidation, and they became the bully themselves bullying people who were pushing them around – and unfortunately others too. That’s a travesty yes, but I’m not sure it should be a punishable offense for a teenager. We should not make these teenagers into criminals because they said something to someone, or bullied someone. And who is to say the tattle-tale or whistleblower isn’t using that as a form of intimidation too – or making up a story for revenge?
Now then, if a bully steals another child’s lunch money, then you need to have a talk with them but you don’t need to call the police. Are you beginning to see where I’m going with this? Okay so, this brings me to my next point, apparently teenagers which are getting into their puberty have a lot of hormones flowing to their brain, any do silly and stupid things.
One thing they do is they do the sex-texting or “sexting” – this is where they take pictures of themselves and send it to their boyfriend or girlfriend. Yes, we all know as adults that’s a really stupid thing to do – however we should not be arresting kids who are doing it, and giving them a criminal record – because that’s even worse. Yes, they need some discipline, and talking too, granted.
Some things are just part of growing up, they are not good necessarily, but it’s what goes on. We don’t have to condone the activity, but we should not make a crime. When criminal law jumps into the normal social interaction between teenagers in a politically correct way we are going to end up making criminals out of regular kids, who are just growing up.
Indeed, it’s already happening, and there is now quite a bit of case law being generated, and many district attorneys willing to take these cases, and lawsuits ensue. Perhaps, we need to stop and rethink all this. Please consider all this.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 21,500 articles was a lot of work – because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off.