Police On My Back(pack)- A

Police On My Back(pack)- A few days ago, Tom Swift posted this item from the LA Times on the Minnesota Politics website. It seems famous Dakota County prosecutor Jim Backstrom is pressing to bring the full weight of the law to bear against...school bullies.

From LA Times:
February 27-28 -- Jail for schoolyard taunts?

In Hastings, Minn., prosecutor James Backstrom has announced "one of the toughest juvenile-justice
policies in the nation: School bullies will go to jail." Subject to the policy are not only kids who
violently lay hands on classmates but also those who"intimidate, harass, pick a fight on the playground or the bus...

Mr. Backstrom wants those who are at least 13 years old to hear a cell door click behind them. ... The jail-for-bullies policy has been in effect since last spring here in Dakota County."

Local prosecutors complain, however, that some judges are undercutting the policy's intent by taking into account such mitigating factors as whether a youngster's misbehavior was provoked.
("New plan to put bullies behind bars", Los Angeles Times )

Remember when schools would just expel the little monsters?

Here's the real rub - from the earliest ages, "masculine" behavior is actively squelched in little boys. Playing "cops and robbers" and pantomiming guns is enough to earn a kid detention or a reprimand. So at the age when little boys are supposed to be learning to moderate their masculine behavior, it's squelched, bottled up. Now, every school psychologist knows you're not supposed to force people's real personalities into a closet. They'd never think of forcing, say, a gay kid to keep his true personality in the closet.

So - when the kids grow up, they're supposed to magically keep that behavior under control without actually being allowed to practice it - and if they don't, the full weight of county government is going to come crashing down on top of them.

Does any of this make sense?

Posted by Mitch at March 1, 2002 07:04 AM