Should teenage bullies be charged with a crime?

submitted by ukromeo from self.AskSaidIt

On "Cobra Kai," some of the episodes deal with high school bullying. The victims learn karate to defend themselves, but most teenagers in real life won't be able to do that at all.

Should teenage bullies be charged with a felony, and should they be tried as adults in a court system? How should they be punished?

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[–]jet199 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No, there really is no point trying to tackle childhood bullying with individual punishment because the problem is allowing kids to develop their own hierarchy in the school. If you scare one bully straight another kid will just rise up and claim their place in the food chain.

Some schools have bullying and some don't. It's down to the culture created by the teachers. That's what needs fixing. Maybe we should put teachers in prison if they run classes and schools where bullying is rife.

Can you imagine if a boss in a company was found to be running a team where bullying was considered the norm which no one could do anything about and staff had to take self defence classes to feel safe. That boss would get dragged through the courts and the company would be sued into the ground, more so than the individual bullies lower down the pecking order. Why do we deal with schools differently when kids have even less control or understanding of their choices than adults in the workplace?

[–]Rah 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Yes. They should be charged with overwhelming based energy for doing God's work of fixing degeneracy at its bud.

[–]Antarchomachus 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Should teenage bullies be charged with a felony, and should they be tried as adults in a court system?

The fact that you would jump right to charging kids as an adult with a felony over something like bullying frightens me far more than the bullying in schools

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

People mean different things by bullying.

Clearly beating the shit out of a kid is an actual crime and kids can be tried as adults in many places for that, but often aren't if it happens to be in school. People will call that bullying and see at as a mild thing purely because of the situation it's happening in.

Social exclusion, harassment, mean words are more commonly what people mean by bullying.

[–]Antarchomachus 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah agree with you jet. I think the OP is a bit extreme given the content of the video. Yes, that was an assault, but the victim got up and walked away relatively unharmed. The girl should be expelled for sure, but charging a kid as an adult makes no sense unless we are talking about a serious beating. I'm not sure that was even worth prosecuting, literally every male child gets into some sort of scuffle like that at school, its frightening to think of the amount of assault charges this would lead to.

[–]mongre 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm more appalled by the quality of Cobra Kai than I am teenage bullying.

[–]jet199 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This is why the best American TV and Film is made in the UK now.

[–]Trajan 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not as adults, but there is a line they can cross that should lead to criminal charges. Serious assaults or repeated assaults would come to mind. It doesn't really make sense to charge children as adults except perhaps in very fringe cases where the crime is very serious and the child is on the older end of the spectrum.

[–]IkeConn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I found out one of my childhood bullies worked in the plant my dad owned. I remember the day he saw me with my dad when I was visiting. Somehow within just a few short years I had gone from being "Ike" to "Mr. Conn". The sudden ass kissing out of this former bullies' mouth was almost sickening. He had gone from being feared to being pitied in a fraction of a second.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[deleted]

    [–]ukromeo[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Bullying serves a vital role in curbing aberrant social behavior in developing children and teenagers.

    How does bullying serve to do that, if antisocial behaviors are the cause of bullying (that you write about in the next line)?

    [–]pretty_innocuous 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    There's no inconsistency. Bullies rightly identify aberrant behavior that needs correction before adulthood, but the bullying itself is still antisocial behavior that requires correction before adulthood.

    [–]yabbit 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    America is fucking brutal with its hazing culture yet parents still send their kids to public school.

    [–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The whole anglosphere is like that.

    50% of our kids get bullied at school while in non-English Europe it's between 5% and 20%.

    It's completely cultural.

    [–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    My experience as the kid who fit in with everyone is that the most unpopular kids were the ones who were the nastiest. At least in high-school. Where the popular kids would tease and rib each other for fun, the unpopular kids would always take it in the worst way possible and get super bitter and vengeful.

    Kids simply trying to be funny to relate to someone will joke about the thing that stands out in someone else. So the kid that has one particular outstanding feature will hear about it constantly and to them it can be interpreted as constant picking. The exact same treatment happens to popular kids and it isn't taken the same.

    We can't have a justice system based on the subjective interpretation of harm by the supposed victim. There is nothing good or just about that.