What do you think about cops ticketing parents of chronic bullies?

I can see pros and cons

PROS:

It might get more parents involved in solving the bullying if they will be punished if they do not

It will make the bullied child feel someone is listening to them

It will set an example to other parents of bullies if they see the law getting involved

CON:

It may clog up the courts

It does not address the psychological factors of what is causing the child to be a bully

A parent that cannot pay the fine will then find themselves in even more hot water

Who pays or is held responsible if parents share custody? It does not address that issue.

A child who bullies is often bullied at home, so now there is a fine, the bully may find himself more bullied at home.

If this does not go on their record, it may not deter wealthy parents

It seems odd that the same legal system that wants to try children who murder, as adults, want to make parents responsible for bullying.

All in all, I see more potential problems than I do benefits. Psychological services for the bully might be more beneficial for all involved. I also think while bullying is getting more rampant due to the anonymity and availability of on line sites, criminalizing parents who have children who bully may not be the solution. Bullying has been around since time began and sadly, kids do have to learn to deal with it on some level.

First of all to the guy that said they should be fined 250,000 dollars over 30 years, your an idiot. Second of all I think this is a step in the right direction but not what should be happening. Although my idea of bullying may be a little different than what's going on in Madison since I came from a town of less than 1000 people Why instead of fining them $114 can't that kid who's doing the bullying be put in some kind of community service until he does $114 dollars worth of work? Or have some kind of "therapy" lesson to see if a solution or reason to the bullying would surface? But also as a personal thought bullying is never going to get "stomped" out, there will always be the geeks and the jocks. I feel deep down this is just another way for the city to get more revenue and money. Bullying goes down to the person and how they handle it. I got pushed around when I was in middle school so you know what? I hit the weights and worked out and kicked a couple asses and by the time I was a highschooler no one screwed with me.

I feel mixed. It might feel like something's chaning, but in the end, the child may not really be bullying, the child may not listen to his/her parents, and the parents may not be able or have no idea how to alter their child's behaviour. If I have a child and as far as I am concerned I have raised him well to not be a bully, how will I react if one day I was fined $114 based on someone's allegation that he is a "chronic" bully? I would certainly ask what standard is being used and whether it is used consistently. I would also wonder, if this was even true, how can I do anything to alter the behaviour- after all I have no idea what I AM doing wrong. Is my child learning this from other students or from teachers? I would have to frequently if no consistently monitor my child's behaviour at school, free from potential contamination (re the kid thinks he's being watched, so he acts good).

Personally a written notification of the child being a chronic bully, and permission to detain said child in an adult jail cell over night, may be more effective, or at least as an alternative. Some kids learn quite fast that you don't pull this **** ever again unless you wanna end up like those prison guys on TV.

There are some issues of oversight, especially towards the parent. Obvious question is whether the cop or those reporting are simply making stuff up, or not even giving me an idea of the context. A kid actually bullying is not the same as watching some kid do what one might immediately consider bullying...such as punching back at some jerk who was constantly provoking. Verbal abuse is just as much bullying, and probably far worse because it is subtle. I was verbally abused quite frequently in school, and a lot of them by teachers too. I was also not the only one. And I'm in my 20s, not some 80 year old that was in school during the mean old days.

I think other cities should watch developments on this over the next school term. It might work.

Problems are : 1) The bullied child is already under threat. Reporting the bully might get him into worse. It could also induce a feud between the parents of both bully and bullied. People in the U.S. use guns to settle disputes, which makes these disputes dangerous.

2) Jail time might wake the parents up as well as their child. What about 30 to 90 days in a detention center? I've often thought that isolating the bad kid / young adult away from his neighbourhood in ... say the Arctic or a desert community where he could work with his hands or do other physical boot-camp type work, along with talking out their problems and anger management therapy ... would benefit. Perhaps the parents can't control the kid. Perhaps the kid has to knuckle under abusive parents. Getting him away to think through his problems could work better than a mere fine (and $114 is a pitiful fine. People are charged more for littering the highways.). The fine could pay part of the costs.

A social worker definitely has to get involved, no matter what.

I can't see how fining the parents $114 would magically make them better parents.

Chances are that the parents will just get angry with the child and make things worse.

Not all parents whose child is a bully are careless parents - they probably just don't know what to do to stop the bullying. What really needs to be done is teach the parents how to stop the bullying.

If a child is bullying and the authority is notified there should be given a warning - and parents who have just been a little careless/absent, will wake up and handle the situation.

If the bullying continues, then the parents probably don't know how to handle the situation and the authority should then send the parents some help; such as a counselor. If the parents ignore the counselors advice, then I would consider fining the parents as a solution to get their attention.

Something other to consider is how much is $114? Sure for some it might be a lot of money, but for others it is nothing. Parents with a lot of money might not care about having to pay fines for bullying.

I'm not an expert in this field at any means. But it seems to me that there has to be done something MORE than just fining parents left and right, if bullying is to be stopped. Something to 'help' the parents, not just 'punish' them.

I have a mixed reaction. As a society, we are long overdue to start holding parents more accountable for the actions of their kids. So I'd never be completely opposed to something that might get that ball rolling.

However, I'm not sure this is the best way to approach it. With bullying, there's not even an easy way to define it. And there's definitely not an easy way to clarify where "kids being kids" ends and bullying begins. So the potential for false allegations, witchhunts, payback, etc is high and doesn't just involve kids. There are certainly parents out there capable of getting caught up in it.

And you also need to question the goal of anything like this. So the parents end up in court and pay the fine. Will this solve the problem? There needs to be some evidence that it would, or the whole thing just comes across as a way to generate revenue.

I see pros and cons of this also. Unfortunately many times, bullies are kids that have psychological problems themselves and many issues at home, are being abused etc and it's the reason they're so angry. My first instinct to say was ya that would be amazing...it would get the parents to be more involved in their kid's lives which these days is hard to come by. However a bully is a bully for a reason, not just because they're mean spiritied. The main unfortunate thing about parents being ticketed for bullying is a) it's not the parents faults all the time. They could be good people but don't have their eyes on their kids 24/7 and the child could have a mental malfunction that is causing this to happen and b) if the bully is being abused it could cause the abuse to increase if their family is being fined for bullying. I don't know, I think in some ways it sounds like a great idea but as usual there are cons to everything as well. Needless to say, bullying needs to stop and the trend of suicides because of bullying needs to stop as well. It may just be another one of those things that can't be faught because the problem is too big and multi-dimentional.

Honestly, I think it's awesome they're finally taking a bigger step to stop bullying. Bullying can lead to many problems for both bully and bullied, physical and mental. It's even caused many shootings and murders. It's great they're taking steps to make people knock it off.

However...I don't think it's right to do it to the parents, the parents didn't do the bad deed. You wouldn't toss someone in jail for assault when they are just a family member of the person who actually hit someone and weren't even there, would you?

No matter how well kids are raised by parents, they cannot be held responsible for the actions of a child when they're not with them ALL the time. They can ground them when they find out and try to make them stop, or discipline them in other ways, but kids will be kids. They all test their boundaries regardless of their parents. They're humans, they have brains, they're going to use them intelligently or not so much. THEY need to learn from their mistakes, the parents have very little, if any blame. With some exceptions of course.

I personally think the children caught bullying should get community service instead. It's not really fair to lay it all on the parents...after all, bullies don't really care...and if they do something bad and -someone else- has to pay...it kinda goes against the point of teaching THEM. But it IS a big step in the right direction to help make it stop, and may well work for many, but for the ones that are just brats and are truly mean, they'll do it again just to get at the parents because they're not the ones getting consequences. They should really find something that punishes the bullies, not the parents. Too many already blame parents for everything their kids do, and any proper parent knows that's not fair.

This is first initially good. Yet everything good has its bad.

This "solution" can create many different outcomes.

Advantages of the fine

1) Can actually stop the bad behavior or limit it.

2) It involves the parents to speak with their child and their problem.

3) Consequence- if the child continues to act up they or their parents will have to pay the fine of $114.

However, the proposed fine can create a stir of domestic abuse at the home of the bully. Resulting into more problems for this "troubled child". Another issue that can occur is the parents beating or getting frustrated at their child because they are costing them money.

To wrap this up, the power and if this bill is affective or not lies on the parents and the officers in charge. This is a step in the right direction as we(society) try to eliminate any sort of bullying.

I can see this from several viewpoints:

1. Argument: Because the bully is the one doing the bullying, the kid should be punished, not the parent.

Counterargument: The fine that the parents pay forces parents to take notice of the bullying and thus possibly do something about it.

2 Argument: The parents are probably the root of the child's bullying.

Counterargument: It's equally as likely that there's another source of the problem. It varies from child to child, I guess.

So, yeah, I can see how this both could and couldn't work out. I'd like to see the results of this new law.

But these questions still boggle my mind:

HOW DO THEY KNOW WHO IS AND ISN'T A BULLY? AND WHAT, EXACTLY, ARE THEIR STANDARDS FOR SOMEONE TO BE A BULLY?

I'm curious to know how they'll determine who's a bully. Most of the time bullying is done discreetly, so how would they even know? The victims can rat them out, but snitching, more often than not, gets the victim in more trouble than the bully does.

I Think That Is A great Idea! Wish We Had That Here In Albuquerque, Cause We Live In City Housing And Surrounded With These Foul Mouthed Spray Painting Sick Little Punks! I Don't Know What To Do. The Police Won't Help And You Can't Talk To The Parents And It Seems Avoided By Almost Everyone Including Our Mngr She Tells Us To Take Pictures But It's Impossible Because Then It Turns Out To Be A Big Production With All The Kids And Other People I Have No Idea Who They Are, Or Where They Came From. Comming On Our DoorstepYelling HELP!