100 Dollar Fine for Bullies!

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This would be a more effective punishment as it would hit the bullies where they live; a monetary fine just goes to their parents.

The problem is that fixed penalty fines create revenue while community service costs money to implement.

I say, tie them up, give them an enema, then forcefeed them the result.

But seriously, folks, I agree with Callista about the community service. In the earlier grades, I'm all for peer mediation, and working with the bullying student on how to better relate to his/ her peers. However, from Middle School onwards, those bullies won't be changing their ways so easily. Thus, if there's any hope of changing things, those bullies need punishment. They should make them labor, in the community, and within the school as well. I'm not sure this is legal, but I'd like to see them washing dishes and cleaning toilets, preferably where their peers can see them. That could be reserved for the more extreme cases of bullying. The more minor cases can pick up garbage in the community, that sort of thing.

Additionally, the burden shouldn't fall upon students to report the bullying. Some will be too ashamed to tell, while others will only be too happy to frame students they don't like. There should be teacher training workshops on bullying. Where I live, teachers are required to take a child abuse class, and required by law to report it if they suspect abuse. A similar policy should be in place for bullying. The teachers and other school staff should be trained to watch for and recognize signs of bullying. When I was in school getting relentlessly bullied by peers, most of my teachers pretended they didn't see what was happening, rendering the bullies free to do what they liked with me, without fear of consequences.

Last edited by OuterBoroughGirl on 22 Jul 2010, 7:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I think that's a better idea than the fine.

The fine necessarily gets paid by parents. It is then up to the parents how they want to handle that at home. There are all sorts of possible ways parents might handle this and some will be bad.

Some will take it out of their kids money if the kids have 100$: good.

Some will pay it themselves because the kids don't have 100$, then have the kids do extra work to pay them back: good

Some will pay it, yell at the kids for 10 minutes, and then move on: bad

Some will not pay it but instead contest it in court: bad

Some will pay it and then beat the kids senseless: bad. Posters who were bullied as children may think that I should file this outcome under 'good' but it actually isn't. Revenge fantasies aside, amping up the cycle of violence really is not good.


But community service is all good. I really don't see a downside. It cuts out the parents, which in some cases is for the best. It's rehabilitative rather than vengeful. And you can't truly hit kids in the pocketbook because they don't actually have a pocketbook. Their parents do. See above list for why hitting the parents in the pocketbook is not necessarily best.

My guess is that the government in question doesn't really care about putting a stop to bullying; it's just using bullying as an excuse to introduce parking ticket style fines and generally raise more money for the government coffers.

As already mentioned, community service doesn't increase revenue, it decreases revenue because they have to pay people to supervise the kids doing community service.

I don't know because when I tried to stand up for myself and would retaliate I was labled as the bully. Teachers were my biggest bullies.

A government that creates a law such as this has no hope of stopping the thing they are fining. All they are doing is pacifying their critics and making themselves look sensitive. The only person who can stop a bully, for good and all, is the victim. And the world is so obsessed with punishment that we never look into teaching the victim that they have that power. When I was in school, I was treated like I was doing something to provoke the teasing, but never taught how much power I had to stop it. Telling someone to ignore a bully and then they'll go away (what I often heard) is not the same as teaching me how to do so effectively. I suppose they didn't know. Of course, they never worked out what I needed anyway to help me learn to function, or never bothered to provide it, just acted frustrated that I was eating into their time and being difficult and passing the buck and making me feel bullied all over again. School administrators are idiots. I haven't met one yet whose "caring attitude" extended far enough to reach the difficult students. They're narcissists who want their daily fix of, "Hi, Mr Principal!" from all the happy students. But I digress.

You can't fine stupidity. But you can teach people that idiots can rage all they want, it doesn't make you what they say you are, doesn't make you have to get mad, they really have not got that power. They're annoying as heck, yeah. And that's their problem.

Unless we're talking work bullies, people who abuse power, yeah, they should be dealt with by the appropriate authorities, that's something different, though. Anyway, I wish I understood at 12 what I do now. Oh, I know, we all have things like that, but I mean I didn't get anywhere at dealing with the trauma until I found the Bullies to Buddies web site. The guy there has some weird ideas about teaching kids to get along, I admit, but he has some good points about how touchy the world has gotten about any kind of joking, to the point that we're not resilient anymore. Everyone's gotten so bent on making their persecutors bleed that we're making ourselves sick with it. I'm trying to use these ideas with my son, who is very sensitive and tends to smack people if they criticize him at all. This is bad enough at 8, it worries me when I think of him at 16. So when he gripes that his sister called him a girl, I ask him if it's true (of course not, he says) and say, well, no worries, she can say it but it'll never be true (most likely, it's a colorful world).

I have been in school stores, stores that sell classroom stuff for teachers to buy or for parents to buy who homeschool their kids and I have seen stuff about how to deal with bullies. What I don't agree with is telling the bully how they make you feel what they say to you or how they are treating you. Yeah like that will get them to stop. Bullies have no empathy, they don't care if they hurt you, they want to hurt you, they love seeing your attention you give them by reacting to them and showing your feelings so telling them how they make you feel is a big mistake. I think it would give them more power to bully you and will keep on doing it knowing they are getting to you.

I love your avatar! It totally suits your messege, heheh.

Actually (while I don't think most schools would even bother with something like this because they're dicks) I think that the bully and the victim need counselling. The bully would have to take responsibility for their actions, perhaps find better ways to vent their frustrations and feelings of deep inadequecy (because most bullies have a pretty low self esteem, believe it or not) while the victim comes to realise that they're not to blame for what happened to them and how to approach any future situations (and perhaps to build their self esteem as well). I pretty much believe in building an olive branch rather than demand that the bully coughs up money everytime they bully. I mean, it's like people think that bullies just go "what a lovely day- I think I'll harrass that kid over there". One thing that is good about the fine is that it shows the bully that there are consequences to their actions and that they have to take responsibility for themselves (which is something that abusive people tend to struggle with).

That's really silly. Also, it worries me that some people are saying stuff along the lines of "bullies are sociopathic scum and they need to be severely punished by method of electric shock devices attatched to their testicles". That's a revenge fantasy - not a suitable punishment. And, hey, I've been bullied before and I remember desperately wanting them to suffer as I have, but I honestly couldn't in my right mind condone harming them. There might be a problem that they have that might have led them to become a bully (not to mention that I would end up being an abusive person too and seeking to harm purely for revenge is f*****g INSANE).

Also, just as the victims are not cowardly or weak, bullies are not all sociopathic, narcisistic scum with no empathy. Some victims become abusive and some abusive people only derive a sense of control and self esteem through the act of harming others (that is often the signature of a self loathing person). What they do can never be justified or acceptable, but they're humans too and if we're brave enough to admit it then I think we'd be more decent as a species.

Let's see... Bully A: calls kid A: names and pays the fine. Kid A: is happy bully A: had to pay the fine. Bully A: goes home and gets beaten for costing the family cash they do not have. Kid A: is picked last to play baseball again. Kid A: calls bulling. The team captians are both fined. Soon kid A: is a bully getting anything he wants or else he will say the other kid is being a bully.

It won't work. It'll be abused all to hell.

When I was in elementary, I used to get punished by the school administration FOR getting bullied.

Imagine some poor Aspie kid getting bullied, then fined $100 bucks. He's never gonna stick up for himself again, either by telling or fighting back.