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Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 7:22:01 AM   
egern


Posts: 537
Joined: 1/11/2013
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Florida:

"[B]A Florida bill advanced in the Senate this week to make bullying a crime, including cyber-bullying online. The new offenses criminalize a range of “harassing” behavior, both in-person and on the Internet. And a second conviction would send perpetrators to jail for a year, criminalizing what is primarily a problem among youths.[/B]

[I]The bill comes in response to concerns of escalating bullying, especially cyberbulling, and is named for 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick, who committed suicide in September 2013, after two teen peers allegedly harassed her over her dating of a particular boy. While Rebecca’s case did not involve LGBT harassment, bullying has been a particular concern among LGBT youth.

The bill establishes that someone who “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly harasses or cyberbullies another person commits the offense of bullying” — a misdemeanor — and that those who engage in such harassment accompanied by a threat are guilty of a third-degree felony."[/I]

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/no-florida-putting-kids-in-jail-isnt-the-solution-for-bullying.html#ixzz2vfB6pkEl

This article thinks that this is bad idea which will send the youths on a prison path in general without solving the problem. (The jail time is on a second offense, not the first.) It also thinks it will not help.

It does not say much about what you should do instead, but points out the many recent overzealous zero tolerance punishment lately.

What do you think? Is it ok to make it an offense, will it help, will it harm freedom of speech?
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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 7:26:09 AM   
searching4mysir


Posts: 2757
Joined: 6/16/2011
Status: offline 		I think in many ways we've coddled children for so long that they never learn to develop a thicker skin. I think it is a horrible idea, and that what is defined as "cyberbullying" would need to be very strictly defined. I detest the bullying laws, and I was bullied to a certain extent as a child.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 8:03:17 AM   
DomKen


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From: Chicago, IL
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quote:

ORIGINAL: searching4mysir

I think in many ways we've coddled children for so long that they never learn to develop a thicker skin. I think it is a horrible idea, and that what is defined as "cyberbullying" would need to be very strictly defined. I detest the bullying laws, and I was bullied to a certain extent as a child.

A boy, who was very effeminate, was bullied so much in my high school that he hung himself. He never had a chance to develop a thicker skin.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 8:22:03 AM   
Lucylastic


Posts: 40310
Status: offline 		My cousin hung himself when he was 14, I was 17
that was 35 years ago
Bullying has been the cause of many teen suicides
blame the victim not the perp, yay


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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 8:58:03 AM   
Tkman117


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Joined: 5/21/2012
Status: offline 		Like the others said, bullying of all kinds result in too many deaths to ever be considered acceptable. Not to mention that if bullies aren't punished for their behaviour, they learn that treating people that way is acceptable and they continue to do so well into their adult lives. I've met adult bullies, my uncle is one, and while he doesn't hit anyone, he treats people like crap. If you teach kids that this sort of thing is unacceptable, it spares the victims a lot of grief and potential harm, and it also nips the problem in the bud and attempts to stop this behaviour from continuing in the future.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 8:59:21 AM   
searching4mysir


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: searching4mysir

I think in many ways we've coddled children for so long that they never learn to develop a thicker skin. I think it is a horrible idea, and that what is defined as "cyberbullying" would need to be very strictly defined. I detest the bullying laws, and I was bullied to a certain extent as a child.

A boy, who was very effeminate, was bullied so much in my high school that he hung himself. He never had a chance to develop a thicker skin.



Where were his parents? Why did he feel he couldn't go to them?

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 10:22:50 AM   
FellowSlave


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quote:

A Florida bill advanced in the Senate this week to make bullying a crime, including cyber-bullying online.


There must be some hidden agenda. Otherwise it makes no sense. Internet freedom bothers the powers that be a lot.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 10:24:21 AM   
kalikshama


Posts: 14805
Joined: 8/8/2010
Status: offline 		I agree that cyber bullying can escalate to what should be considered criminal behavior, but do not feel that (in most cases) jail time for children is an appropriate punishment.

This speaks to a larger issue of schools turning disciplinary matters over to the police.

Florida Students Handcuffed For "Trespassing" At Their Own School

Florida has long been notorious for its particularly zealous system of criminalizing student discipline known as the school-to-prison pipeline. In 2005, the state made more than 28,000 student arrests, thanks to a “zero tolerance” policy. Seven years later, even as the state has halved that figure to 14,000 arrests in 2012, police intervention in student discipline remains alarmingly common in particular regions, with arrests occurring most frequently for behavior that includes “trespassing” on school property when a student was purportedly suspended, petty school-yard fights, and classroom violations like refusing to take a cell phone out of a pocket. What’s more, Florida still arrests more students than any other state. An extensive new report from the Orlando Sentinel explains:

...

This phenomenon is not isolated to Florida. Some of the most egregious incidents of criminalizing student behavior have occurred in Mississippi, where students at one school were regularly handcuffed to a rail in a school gymnasium for not wearing a belt, and a peanut-throwing fight on a school bus resulted in the arrest of five students for felony assault, which carries a minimum five years in prison. But the problem is nationwide, and does not bode well for the future U.S. incarceration rate, which currently eclipses that of any other country in the world.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/15/1599311/florida-students-handcuffed-for-trespassing-at-their-own-school/#

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 11:06:28 AM   
egern


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Joined: 1/11/2013
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quote:

ORIGINAL: FellowSlave

quote:

A Florida bill advanced in the Senate this week to make bullying a crime, including cyber-bullying online.


There must be some hidden agenda. Otherwise it makes no sense. Internet freedom bothers the powers that be a lot.


What hidden agenda?? I do agree with your last sentence, but fail to see it here.

(in reply to FellowSlave)
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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 11:13:48 AM   
egern


Posts: 537
Joined: 1/11/2013
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: kalikshama

I agree that cyber bullying can escalate to what should be considered criminal behavior, but do not feel that (in most cases) jail time for children is an appropriate punishment.

This speaks to a larger issue of schools turning disciplinary matters over to the police.

Florida Students Handcuffed For "Trespassing" At Their Own School

Florida has long been notorious for its particularly zealous system of criminalizing student discipline known as the school-to-prison pipeline. In 2005, the state made more than 28,000 student arrests, thanks to a “zero tolerance” policy. Seven years later, even as the state has halved that figure to 14,000 arrests in 2012, police intervention in student discipline remains alarmingly common in particular regions, with arrests occurring most frequently for behavior that includes “trespassing” on school property when a student was purportedly suspended, petty school-yard fights, and classroom violations like refusing to take a cell phone out of a pocket. What’s more, Florida still arrests more students than any other state. An extensive new report from the Orlando Sentinel explains:

...

This phenomenon is not isolated to Florida. Some of the most egregious incidents of criminalizing student behavior have occurred in Mississippi, where students at one school were regularly handcuffed to a rail in a school gymnasium for not wearing a belt, and a peanut-throwing fight on a school bus resulted in the arrest of five students for felony assault, which carries a minimum five years in prison. But the problem is nationwide, and does not bode well for the future U.S. incarceration rate, which currently eclipses that of any other country in the world.

Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/02/15/1599311/florida-students-handcuffed-for-trespassing-at-their-own-school/#



I agree with the bigger picture - and I do not understand this boot camp mentality in so many schools.

However, those were harmless pranks or small infractions of rules being punished out of all proportion - totally taking any sense out of the 'zero tolerance' concept. But cyber bullying isn't harmless and is definitely not a prank.

I do not know if this is the right way, also thinking of more restrictions on the net, but I feel that this bullying problem has to be addressed somehow, someway, and no other idea has come up. I think society has to send some sort of signal that this is not ok.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 12:34:52 PM   
Zonie63


Posts: 2826
Joined: 4/25/2011
From: The Old Pueblo
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: egern


Florida:

"[B]A Florida bill advanced in the Senate this week to make bullying a crime, including cyber-bullying online. The new offenses criminalize a range of “harassing” behavior, both in-person and on the Internet. And a second conviction would send perpetrators to jail for a year, criminalizing what is primarily a problem among youths.[/B]

[I]The bill comes in response to concerns of escalating bullying, especially cyberbulling, and is named for 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick, who committed suicide in September 2013, after two teen peers allegedly harassed her over her dating of a particular boy. While Rebecca’s case did not involve LGBT harassment, bullying has been a particular concern among LGBT youth.

The bill establishes that someone who “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly harasses or cyberbullies another person commits the offense of bullying” — a misdemeanor — and that those who engage in such harassment accompanied by a threat are guilty of a third-degree felony."[/I]

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/no-florida-putting-kids-in-jail-isnt-the-solution-for-bullying.html#ixzz2vfB6pkEl

This article thinks that this is bad idea which will send the youths on a prison path in general without solving the problem. (The jail time is on a second offense, not the first.) It also thinks it will not help.

It does not say much about what you should do instead, but points out the many recent overzealous zero tolerance punishment lately.

What do you think? Is it ok to make it an offense, will it help, will it harm freedom of speech?


I can see some merit in it, although in cases of cyberbullying, it would seem to me that there would be electronic evidence and other ways to prove it that may not have been possible in the past. I remember back in my school days, bullying went on because "nobody saw anything" and "nobody could prove anything." But now, everyone has a camera on the cellphone and records everything, along with surveillance cameras, as well as records of text messages and phone records. Wouldn't they be able to gather enough evidence of cyberbullying, at least enough to get the perpetrators expelled or something?

It is a rather sad commentary that a law has to be passed over something that should be a school disciplinary issue. But then, someone else in this thread raised a good question: Where are the parents in all this? It's easy to blame the schools, and no doubt there are many schools that should do a better job.

I can't say that I was really "bullied" in school. I did run into my share of loudmouths and nemeses - and even a couple fights along the way, but nothing too severe. I don't know about having a thicker skin, though. The one thing that kept most of the kids restrained was not so much the school itself, but the fact that getting in trouble in school meant getting in trouble with your parents. I don't know if the kids really worry about that as much as they used to.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 1:17:30 PM   
DomKen


Posts: 19457
Joined: 7/4/2004
From: Chicago, IL
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: searching4mysir


quote:

ORIGINAL: DomKen

quote:

ORIGINAL: searching4mysir

I think in many ways we've coddled children for so long that they never learn to develop a thicker skin. I think it is a horrible idea, and that what is defined as "cyberbullying" would need to be very strictly defined. I detest the bullying laws, and I was bullied to a certain extent as a child.

A boy, who was very effeminate, was bullied so much in my high school that he hung himself. He never had a chance to develop a thicker skin.



Where were his parents? Why did he feel he couldn't go to them?

I didn't know them. But it was the suburban south in the 80's it is not impossible that the parents were no more accepting than were the high school students.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 2:35:04 PM   
MercTech


Posts: 3706
Joined: 7/4/2006
Status: offline 		The pattern of bullying and tacit approval by school administrations has a long history.
After the Columbine shootings one blog found a different mem among its readers, "It was so bad in H.S. I could have one of the shooters."

Here is a link to "Voices from the Hellmouth"

http://news.slashdot.org/story/99/04/25/1438249/voices-from-the-hellmouth

I avidly followed that thread thinking back to my experience in high school.

I had been offered a full ride music scholarship to college. Until a jock took exception to my being in a classroom where he was and beat me in the face wearing a large class ring. Teeth knocked out, lip torn and bloody, and an emergency trip to a dental surgeon. The school refused to call an Ambulance as that would involve the police but called my mother to leave work and take me off campus.

The boy who jumped me was never disciplined at all. After all, he was a football star and his father was a well off owner of a restaurant. When I returned to school with a lip swollen out past my nose and wires holding my teeth together I was subjected to a couple of hours of questioning on how I had provoked the incident.

To this day I have a lump of keloid tissue in my upper lip and it is numb from nerve damage. I never could play a horn worth a crap after that.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 3:02:28 PM   
DomKen


Posts: 19457
Joined: 7/4/2004
From: Chicago, IL
Status: offline 		Sometimes it amazes me that there aren't more school shootings like Columbine with the way outsider kids are treated.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 3:42:48 PM   
FellowSlave


Posts: 97
Joined: 11/23/2013
Status: offline
quote:

What hidden agenda?? I do agree with your last sentence, but fail to see it here.


Moving step by step, "bullying" is already policing thoughts. The definitions will be stretched and "bullying" will evolve into something like unsubstantiated critique of "officials". They always start with protecting children, look at current gun-grabbing efforts. Very similar push is going on here in Canada(, it has been voted down but they keep reviving the efforts.
For example:
"New cyberbullying law has 'larger agenda,' expands police powers"
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-cyberbullying-law-has-larger-agenda-expands-police-powers-1.2434797

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/11/2014 5:31:37 PM   
fucktoyprincess


Posts: 2337
Status: offline 		FR
I cannot comment on this specific piece of legislation. But I will say this. Serious bullying is extremely problematic. And I am tired of victims being told they just have to deal with it. Serious bullying is NOT someone just calling someone names.

In my experience teens who bully become adults who bully.

Is there something positive about bullying such that we do not want to curb bullying? What does it say about us as a society if we prefer to side with the bullies and tell the victims to "grow up". The bullies never "grow up" They become adult bullies. Why are the victims held to a higher standard than the bullies themselves?

If this law is not the answer then we need something else. The leeway we give bullies prevents them from dealing with whatever issues they have and actually trying to better themselves as human beings. Bullies need to solve whatever awful reasons they have for externalizing their anger at the world. Today it is cyberbullying. Tomorrow it is physically abusing their child because they still haven't resolved their issues. Why is this okay?

Might is not always right.

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RE: Jail time for cyber bullying Florida - 3/16/2014 7:56:00 PM   
rockspider


Posts: 633
Joined: 9/26/2009
Status: offline 		Bullying in the schools is all the rage to talk about here in my country. But I feel that the debate skirts around what the issue really is all about. If one wants to understand the problem, the book “The Sociopath Next Door” by Martha Stout is an excellent reference. The Florida law might be the kind of steps needed.
Sociopath, psychopath or dysfunctional personality disorder, which is the clinical name for it, is everywhere. The biggest study in to it was in USA. 20000 randomly selected were interviewed. Sadly enough, state laws in some states prevented the full questionnaire being used everywhere. But where the full questionnaire was used the conclusion was that it was 4, 5 % of the population and the rest 2 % of the population did have the personality disorder. It is incurable and the only thing which can contain it is strong consequences when they do what they do. The earlier, the better.
Think about it. In USA there is between 6.000.000 and 13.000.000 people living who have no conscience at all. A scaring thought!!!
And before anybody howls about me being anti American for saying the above I can only say that the studies which have been done in Europe has backed the American up to the hilt. The problem is the same over here and the lack of action on it is similar bad.

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