When Pranks Become Crimes

A disturbing trend in school to student relationships is viewing symptoms of adolescent behavior as crimes. As evidenced by this recent incident in a Chicago middle school, the presence of a cop on campus quickly escalated a harmless food fight to 25 misdemeanor charges with heavy police presence and student arrests. Middle school students spending time in jail for a food fight? What is happening to our common sense with regard to discipline in schools? Perhaps the need to criminalize our kids' behavior stems from the fact that we are asking/expecting them to behave like adults. When they act irresponsibly, more like the kids they are, instead of treating them from an adult to kid relationship with appropriate consequences, we are now locked into an adult to adult consequence, hence the viewpoint that the behavior is criminal. At our own school, I have seen horseplay in the hallway be reported as "mugging". Writing on a desk is "graffiti". A tossed pencil or empty water bottle is a "projectile" and so on. I think we need to evaluate the correlation between adolescent mistakes, pranks and misbehavior and criminal intent quickly before we go completely over the top as they did the other day in Chicago.

Click on the title to read the full NYTimes article.