Poll: Should Bullys be Prosecuted? (Poll)

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DANEgerous

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Tiamattt said:
Aeonknight said:
Like any crime the punishment would depend on the severity of the crime. A wedgie obviously wouldn't land you in juvy/jail.
Sure it would! it is bullying is bullying and would carry a prision srntance. At least that is what wit would come to once it become a criminal act, bullying ALL bullying no matter how minor will become a criminal offense "you're a dodo head" is a misdemeanor, race, sexist or cultural slurs would be a felony.

This may sound like a slippery slope fallacy but it is not as far as I can tell, the cases of bullies being prosecuted are not prosecuted under the offense "bullying" (at least not as far as i know) but rather some for of emotional, physical or sexual harassment, opening "bullying" as an offense punishable by law and all bullying is punishable by law
 

Tiamattt

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DANEgerous said:
Tiamattt said:
Aeonknight said:
Like any crime the punishment would depend on the severity of the crime. A wedgie obviously wouldn't land you in juvy/jail.
Sure it would! it is bullying is bullying and would carry a prision srntance. At least that is what wit would come to once it become a criminal act, bullying ALL bullying no matter how minor will become a criminal offense "you're a dodo head" is a misdemeanor, race, sexist or cultural slurs would be a felony.

This may sound like a slippery slope fallacy but it is not as far as I can tell, the cases of bullies being prosecuted are not prosecuted under the offense "bullying" (at least not as far as i know) but rather some for of emotional, physical or sexual harassment, opening "bullying" as an offense punishable by law and all bullying is punishable by law
Um, sure if the law was made by idiots. See assault laws, obviously you get a hell of a lot more for beating someone to a pulp then 1 slap to the face. Just because it would be under the same general crime doesn't mean they all carry equal punishment, that would be stupid and not even close to how laws work irl.
 

StriderShinryu

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I really don't see why there shouldn't be prosecution or at least some form of guaranteed punishment. Bullying really does seem to be getting worse these days with all of the online things that go on now and it may be the only way to get things to stop.
 

Rednog

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No.
People want to throw kids in jail for something really ambiguous as bullying?
How about having the schools and parents actually step up and punish their damn kids for being brats?
Seriously this generation of kids who have been raised by hippy parents needs to change, beat your damn kid's ass when he or she misbehaves.
But this is a generation of kids who scream foul if they get any sort of punishment, remember the dad who unloaded a 45 into his kid's laptop when she was being a brat? Look at all the kids and teens who were like omg he is a psychopath if my parent did that I'd call the cops!
That right there is the bs entitlement that this generation has been raised on, teach your damn kids discipline.
 

Lovely Mixture

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Scars Unseen said:
orangeban said:
You're not allowed to verbally harass adults, beat up adults, steal adults money or publically ridicule adults.

Why should the situation be any different for children? Why is bullying tolerated at all?
Laziness. I've seen bullying occur while teachers were present, but to stop the incident would involve pausing their conversation and getting up out of their chairs. Can't have that. I never really was subject to bullying myself, but the outright negligence on the teachers' part always pissed me off.
Like DANEgerous (who quoted you before), I believe this to the casem though I was not physically bullied. My worst memories of highschool are when teachers did nothing or wouldn't take action unless it was really serious.

Yet two years after, when my sister began attending. She was suspended for being in the same ROOM as another person who said the N-word (and not even in a offensive way).

I don't care if it's just a slap on the wrist, I just would wanted them to give them a slap at all.
 

Torrasque

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Ehhhh, this would be hard to prosecute in my opinion.
Yes, the bullies that bully kids to the point where the kids commit suicide, should be punished for essentially causing the death of someone. Actually carrying out the prosecution and prosecuting the right people, would be insanely hard.
Ok, it'd be easy to prosecute the bullies that beat up the kids, that is a pretty simple case. However, what about kids that only did it once? What about their friends that just sat their and watched? While they did not directly contribute to the physical harm, their presence gave the bully that did beat up the kid, the "courage" to beat up the kid. Wouldn't these kids be responsible as well?
Getting into the bullies that called kids names (which is all of them) would be much harder. How would you gauge severity of name calling? Would a bully that said "you're fat" once be weighed the same as one that said "you're fat" a thousand times? Would one that said "you're fat" a thousand times, be weighed the same as one that said "you're a fag" once? What about the ones that were not being bullied, that did not call the kid names themselves, but sat their and let it happen?

Ethics states that inaction is identical to inaction in most cases. If you are forced in a situation where you have to choose who dies, and you choose no one, someone still dies. In a case like that, you are still responsible for someone's death.

So, while it would be fair for the bullies to be punished for causing pain on those they bullied--I'm not going to get into the issue of the psychological problems the bullies go through that causes them to bully, that is another can of worms--it would be insanely difficult to actually carry out.
 

DANEgerous

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Tiamattt said:
DANEgerous said:
Tiamattt said:
Aeonknight said:
Like any crime the punishment would depend on the severity of the crime. A wedgie obviously wouldn't land you in juvy/jail.
Sure it would! it is bullying is bullying and would carry a prision srntance. At least that is what wit would come to once it become a criminal act, bullying ALL bullying no matter how minor will become a criminal offense "you're a dodo head" is a misdemeanor, race, sexist or cultural slurs would be a felony.

This may sound like a slippery slope fallacy but it is not as far as I can tell, the cases of bullies being prosecuted are not prosecuted under the offense "bullying" (at least not as far as i know) but rather some for of emotional, physical or sexual harassment, opening "bullying" as an offense punishable by law and all bullying is punishable by law
Um, sure if the law was made by idiots. See assault laws, obviously you get a hell of a lot more for beating someone to a pulp then 1 slap to the face. Just because it would be under the same general crime doesn't mean they all carry equal punishment, that would be stupid and not even close to how laws work irl.
No but they all carry legal punishment in that they are a crime, legal punishment is not a warning it is not detention it is something that goes on your criminal record. You get fines, jail time and probation. Also "assault" whether it is beating a person to a pulp or a mere slap in the face is the same criminal charge so yeah in a way that is how the law works IRL the only difference is you sue for injuries on a more sever case and can likely press attempted murder but if you do not get attempted murder and merely get assault yeah the severity of said assault is entirely irrelevant as far as your criminal record goes.
 

Winterfel

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OF COURSE!
No, they really shouldn't. You can't just prosecute someone for their socialization, that would be like prosecuting someone for not wanting to eat their vegetables.
If you want to right what is wrong with this you need to find out what is causing it, it really isn't as simple as he bullies because he's a douche.
But of course when the line is crossed and they are commiting crimes, like physically assaulting someone, but then again isn't that obvious? Why should you ever be exempt from law just because you're young? Sure the punishment should probably not be as harsh but they still broke the law.
Bullying is one of those things which occur but arn't really dealt with until it is way too late. I mean you don't really punish kids severely enough in school and -at home- when they're acting like a complete douche. If they don't lose social standing, respect or confidence from behaving this way they won't actually understand that it is something they shouldn't do.

No one ever starts a day off with the thought: "Today I'm gonna be the biggest douche I can possibly manage to be.".
 

Tiamattt

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[/quote]No but they all carry legal punishment in that they are a crime, legal punishment is not a warning it is not detention it is something that goes on your criminal record. You get fines, jail time and probation. Also "assault" whether it is beating a person to a pulp or a mere slap in the face is the same criminal charge so yeah in a way that is how the law works IRL the only difference is you sue for injuries on a more sever case and can likely press attempted murder but if you do not get attempted murder and merely get assault yeah the severity of said assault is entirely irrelevant as far as your criminal record goes.[/quote]


LOL, go ahead and quote where I mentioned warnings or detention. And yeah you get the same criminal charge but here's the important part: the punishment itself would be different depending on the severity of the crime, some can land you in jail while others gets you a slap on the wrist and a fine. Not sure what world you're living in but that's a lot different then just having the option to sue someone or trying to get a higher charge. And no idea why you're even bringing criminal record into this, I certainly didn't mention it.
 

JoesshittyOs

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C'mon, do you guys really think punishing the bullies is going to make it better? That somehow it's going to stop it?

As if that's not gonna reinforce the alleged bullies and make them come back to the harassment twice as hard? That's not how kids work.

We need to teach people to toughen up. There is a lot of solace in the ability to not care what people think about you. Telling kids that the bullies have no right to bully you only makes it harder when they can't accept the fact that there generally is nothing you can do. Go to the victims of bullies instead. Work with them.

The people that end up killing themselves because of bullying? Sure, go after those kids. Though I'm not saying that in the hopes that the bullies in those situations will be reformed. They should be punished.
 

OneCatch

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Zack Alklazaris said:
(Suicide is the leading cause of death in children 14 and 8% of all teens bullied try to commit Suicide)

I'd be very cautious about such a statement. How was such a figure worked out? Are they classing all 'cutting' as a suicide attempt? How big is the sample size? Are the children's claims verifiable or are they exaggerating/suppressing certain things?

I guess I'm sceptical because the vast majority of people get some kind of bullying at some point in school. If 8% of those people were trying to kill themselves there'd be a lot more dead kids.
And it's not that long since I was in school, and I certainly don't remember any of my classmates trying to top themselves. You had a couple of idiots cutting, but that's not a suicide attempt. We had two people in my school (which had about 2500 pupils at any time) actually kill themselves, and one of them was after she left. That's during a period through which about 3100 people went through our school. That's nowhere near 8%. And as you'll see, I'm from an area that really excelled itself at suicide!

Zack Alklazaris said:
With bullying/suicide ratio rising more and more in recent years I wonder how many of us think there should be more done to prevent it. As in make it illegal (and prosecutable) to bully someone. With so many other laws protecting people from harassment, bullying seems to be a natural next step. While many schools are doing their best to combat this threat it seems that when it comes to day to day life nothing is done.

I am no stranger to bullying, 10 years ago I remember coming home almost daily and crying in my bed. I would go to my parents and beg them to transfer me to a different school. But that was it. We had to dial in to the internet and it took 30 minutes to download one MP3. There was no facebook, hell there wasn't even myspace. Whatever crap I dealt with in school was over at the end of the day. Now days kids can't get away from bullying even after school unless they choose to live the secluded life of being internetless. Why should they make a choice like that.
You have my sympathy! And the internet is obviously a factor, but you must remember that the media has a habit of over-sensationalising these things:
I'm from a town called Bridgend that was, while I was doing my A-Levels, informally known as "Suicide Central" because of the supposedly high rate of suicides in the under 25s. We even got our own wiki page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgend_suicide_incidents]!
But the thing is, the media didn't report this accurately, they sensationalized [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3635396/Bridgend-suicides-It-just-seems-normal-fashionable-almost...-.html] everything to fit their world view.
They decided to blame Bebo (kiddy social networking site). No one at the time even used Bebo. But the press became convinced [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-517410/The-Bridgend-suicides-Just-whats-happened-innocent-little-town-I-grew-in.html] that there was some kind of suicide cult that persuaded people online to off themselves. It was patently absurd. People don't kill themselves because of social networking sites.

Zack Alklazaris said:
It seems like when people get online they detach themselves and no longer see other people as living beings. There was one 15 year old girl who was bullied on facebook to the point where even after she killed herself people were posting horrible messages on her memorial page.

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/01/phoebe_prince_15_commits_suici.php

Just seems like this shouldn't happen. Something that is caused by an outside source, not by the victims choice, shouldn't be allowed to continue so leisurely. The question for my fellow Escapists are what are your thoughts? Do you have any ideas on how to curve this? Should bullies be prosecuted? Have you had a similar experience? If so I would love to hear your thoughts.

EDIT: A few people may think I am talking about simple bullying. I am not talking your momma jokes or four eyes comments. I'm talking hardcore hatred. Your a fag, your a whore, kill yourself no one cares, etc. Getting beaten up after school for your beliefs.

Maybe kids do need to get a thicker skin, but when you deal with the same insults day after day wouldn't it cut deep after a while?
I agree that more could be done by websites to deal with online bullying, but at the end of the day, it's down to the individual. You don't have to log in after all.
Even if facebook were to say tomorrow that they were shutting down all under-18 accounts, kids would be mean to each other on myspace. Or MSN.

As other have said, the law is already there to protect those that are the victims of serious bullying (bodily harm, threats, persistent harassment).
If you were to criminalise bullying as a whole you'd get millions of prosecutions of minors, when very little harm had actually been done, on spurious evidence (kids lie), for very little gain.
Almost everyone gets some kind of grim bullying at some point in school. If it were illegal, I'd have put half my class behind bars by the time I was 14. And I'd have been behind bars too. And that would hardly improve things for anyone!
 

Yuno Gasai

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Jamash said:
A lot of the methods used in bullying are already against the law (e.g. assault, harassment, slander, hate speech, inciting hatred) so I don't see why bullies can't be prosecuted under existing laws.
This.

I would agree that more needs to be done in order to enforce those laws, and to show kids/young people that treating other people in that manner is unacceptable, and that there will be consequences.
 

PMorgan18

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I have mixed feelings on this. I was bullied when I was a kid for a couple years until my dad told me, "You can either hide behind your mom's skirt or you can get back at them." So I listen to my dad and with some friends we dealt with the bullies and you know what. I was never bullied again.
Do I like seeing kids bullied? No but I stop caring pretty quick when they don't do anything about it because I fixed my situation.
So my stand point would have to be no, bullies shouldn't be prosecuted. Its kids being kids, with some of the kids having too thin of skin.
 

TwiZtah

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Heaven said:
Genuinely ridiculous. Just because something can harm people doesn't mean it should be illegal, and it is very dangerous to prosecute anyone purely on the basis of what they say. If what is being done falls under harassment or assault laws, you can use those. But to criminalize people being mean? That would be a terrible disgrace to freedom, and I am shocked that so many people are willing to surrender that.
As I have already said in this thread, if you go to a man on the street, calling him names and then beat the crap out of him, would society just let you go on with your day or would you be prosecuted and possibly jailed? yes, just because they are young does NOT mean that a group of kids can do this to another kid.

Now, I don't mean that we should jail 7 year olds, but fucking hell, the school needs to do shit. When you get older, say 15, you should be able to go to jail for bullying, because it is assault. And mostly, the whole damn school is a witness, so you would have plenty of those, not just words against words.
 

Gnoekeos

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krazykidd said:
Now because i know the escapists hate to hae people that don't agree with their opinion i will get quoted , i'm telling you guys right now , i will not respond to quotes.
You know all you have to do is ignore the fact that you're being quoted. I didn't particularly care for the rest of your post but honestly this is the most idiotic part. To me when someone makes a statement like this its basically saying "Just ignore what I said earlier it didn't really have any meaning or value I just said it because I wanted to troll people." Anyway have fun not responding to this.
 

RaikuFA

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OneCatch said:
As other have said, the law is already there to protect those that are the victims of serious bullying (bodily harm, threats, persistent harassment).
Nope, it dosen't exist. I was attacked inside and outside of my school and the teachers/police would go "If we didn't see it, nothing happened so nothing can be done." or "Just deal with it." Mind you I'm 12 and a 16 year old is kicking me and bodyslamming me. I even had teachers encouraging the beatings and was told if anything was done to her(the teacher) the punishments would get worse.
 

OneCatch

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RaikuFA said:
OneCatch said:
As other have said, the law is already there to protect those that are the victims of serious bullying (bodily harm, threats, persistent harassment).
Nope, it dosen't exist. I was attacked inside and outside of my school and the teachers/police would go "If we didn't see it, nothing happened so nothing can be done." or "Just deal with it." Mind you I'm 12 and a 16 year old is kicking me and bodyslamming me. I even had teachers encouraging the beatings and was told if anything was done to her(the teacher) the punishments would get worse.
Fair dos, that sounds really grim! :/

Do you mind if I ask where you are? Because I can't see that happening in a Comp in the UK. We had pushing and shoving and elbowing and shinkicking and things, which the teachers couldn't really do much about, but any proper fights got broken up and punished fairly quickly.
I assumed it would be pretty similar in the US
 

Sehnsucht Engel

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Seanfall said:
Wenseph said:
Yeah, they should be. I've been bullied a lot in my life. Even when I got older... I don't know, but people tend to have a problem with me. I've moved quite a bit too, but it still happens to me. It's not happened lately... I've tried to avoid people, even my classmates.

I also find gossiping to be the part of bullying I hate the most. Like when people start spreading lies about you, behind your back. If I hear someone as much as say my name, to someone else... Well, that's the kind of people I'd avoid no matter what. Not saying that all of them do it, but gossiping still says a lot about a person.
You ever turn and ask them why their talking about you? I often got told 'it doesn't concern you.' Then stop talking about me....
No, but most of the time I've heard the context they were talking about me in...
 

Heaven's Guardian

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TwiZtah said:
Heaven said:
Genuinely ridiculous. Just because something can harm people doesn't mean it should be illegal, and it is very dangerous to prosecute anyone purely on the basis of what they say. If what is being done falls under harassment or assault laws, you can use those. But to criminalize people being mean? That would be a terrible disgrace to freedom, and I am shocked that so many people are willing to surrender that.
As I have already said in this thread, if you go to a man on the street, calling him names and then beat the crap out of him, would society just let you go on with your day or would you be prosecuted and possibly jailed? yes, just because they are young does NOT mean that a group of kids can do this to another kid.

Now, I don't mean that we should jail 7 year olds, but fucking hell, the school needs to do shit. When you get older, say 15, you should be able to go to jail for bullying, because it is assault. And mostly, the whole damn school is a witness, so you would have plenty of those, not just words against words.
Did you actually read a word I posted? I specifically said "f what is being done falls under harassment or assault laws, you can use those". If you "beat the crap" out of someone, as you so eloquently put it, you can charge someone under those assault laws that already exist, and you don't need any laws or discussions about bullying. But the name-calling part? That is an shameful thing to say, that human beings should be arrested, tried and convicted for calling someone else names.
 

RaikuFA

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OneCatch said:
RaikuFA said:
OneCatch said:
As other have said, the law is already there to protect those that are the victims of serious bullying (bodily harm, threats, persistent harassment).
Nope, it dosen't exist. I was attacked inside and outside of my school and the teachers/police would go "If we didn't see it, nothing happened so nothing can be done." or "Just deal with it." Mind you I'm 12 and a 16 year old is kicking me and bodyslamming me. I even had teachers encouraging the beatings and was told if anything was done to her(the teacher) the punishments would get worse.
Fair dos, that sounds really grim! :/

Do you mind if I ask where you are? Because I can't see that happening in a Comp in the UK. We had pushing and shoving and elbowing and shinkicking and things, which the teachers couldn't really do much about, but any proper fights got broken up and punished fairly quickly.
I assumed it would be pretty similar in the US
I grew up in Maryland but took HS in New Jersey where my only bullies were my friends who thought I was a ****** because I could never get anyone to go out with me.