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Name: Jack
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Location: Kingston upon Hull/ Brighton, UK

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Re: "My Bullied Son's Last Day on Earth" - April 24th 2009, 12:05 PM

I don't really like this idea for several reasons.

1) In order to bring criminal charges against some of the kids who bully people you would have to lower the age of criminal responsibility which I do not really think should happen. It's where it is for a reason.

2) How would you show the mens rea (aka intent) of the crime. I think it would be fair to say that bully's should only be held accountable if they aim to cause the kid to kill themselves otherwise you have a strict liability offense which are always rather contraversial. Similarly some bullies do not think that what they are doing is actually bullying (I will come back to this later) and I would hazard that very few bullies actually intend to cause such damage to their victims. Also would the thin skull rule be taken into account for this or not? Sometimes it takes a lot to cause someone to kill themselves and sometimes it just takes a word in the wrong place. Should we treat both cases equally?

3) What would be the punishment when convicted of "bullying"? Jail? No that would be too harsh. Juvenile Delinquency Centre? Still too harsh I think as you're basically removing the kid from his family + Juvie rather makes kids worse in my experience. A fine? That wouldn't make sense as the parents of the bully would have to pay it rather than the bully him/herself which means he/she basically escapes punishment. Frankly denying them the right to a driver's licence is both petty and really really arbitrary.

4) Making it a crime would place an extra burden on the state, I don't think this should be so. If this became a subject for the law to become involved in it would make more sense to place it in tort law rather than criminal law. Firstly this avoids criminalising children for a stupid childhood mistake which I highly disagree with as a criminal record severely limits your job opportunities. Secondly this also takes the burden off the state and minimises the chances of all the frivolous claims which would take place if it was enacted under the criminal system.

5) Also, I would say that better teacher training is necessary first before resorting to such drastic measures.

6) I also think that requiring the teachers to notify the police everytime a kid claims they are being bullied is ridiculous. That wastes police time when any school can, with the right teacher training, deal with it internally. It also will lead to a certain amount of bureaucracy as even when the teacher knows that a kid is over-reacting and shouting "bullying" when it's not really they will be required to get the police involved. Also, just talking to the bully can end things; as I said earlier some bullies have no clue that what they are doing is bullying and getting the police involved is just far too heavy handed. The police should be used as a last resort not a first resort.

7) Bullies are victims too. The reasons they bully often stem from many many problems in their personal life. Now while I am not defending the fact that they bully people I don't see why we need to traumatise them by ending them through the very scary legal system. Remember, they're kids too and generally just a product of their environment.

8) From what I have noticed from these sorts of cases is that victims very rarely kill themselves for one reason there are generally various reasons on top of the bullying. How would you prove causality? If the kid kills themselves due to previous depression, poor home life, girlfriend dumping them AND bullying then how do you determine which caused his death and how is it fair to place all the blame on the bully?

9) To a degree it IS just "kids will be kids". It's human nature to dislike people who are different to you, it's tribal, kids will always pick out other kids who are different to them and shun them for those differences. This is because they haven't adequately been taught that differences are not a bad thing. Hence why teacher training and lessons which promote tolerance are what are needed rather than police intervention.

Last edited by Jack; April 24th 2009 at 01:04 PM. Reason: Adding (8) + (9)
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