Schools should be places where children learn, grow, and develop into young adults. Yet across the country, many students face a different reality. Instead of nurturing environments, their school experiences are shaped by surveillance and law enforcement intervention.
At most middle schools and high schools a full-time police officer can be seen patrolling the hallways. The presence of police officers—often referred to as School Resource Officers (SROs)—has become normalized in public schools across the United States. Initially justified as a means to protect students and prevent school shootings, this policy shift has had unintended and deeply damaging consequences.
Among the most alarming is the rise in the egregious prosecution of children for behavior that, in previous generations, would have been handled by teachers or administrators—not the criminal justice system. The point of having police in schools is to protect the kids, but increasingly police are treating the kids as criminal suspects. What once may have resulted in a trip to the principal’s office now often leads to criminal charges, and arrests.
What used to be considered minor disciplinary issues—talking back, skipping class, or getting into fights—are now often treated as criminal offenses. When police are stationed in schools, they are far more likely to arrest students for behaviors that, outside of a law enforcement context, would never be seen as criminal.
How To Parent When Children Are Being Prosecuted For Behavior At School
Parents use life experiences to help guide their kids and help them navigate school. But most parents today did not grow up in a world where children were regularly prosecuted for minor disciplinary issues in school. Parents are often shocked to find their children being criminally prosecuted for following their common sense advice.
If a parent tells their child to stand up to bullies and that child follows that advice by standing up for themselves, either through words or actions, there is a good chance the child is criminally charged for assault or verbal harassment.
Parents cannot assume that common sense is being applied when it comes to school discipline. Telling a child simply to do the right thing does not protect them from prosecution even if they follow the advice.
No parent wants to tell their kids that they should live in fear of being criminally prosecuted for any possible transgression at school, but that is the lived reality for students today. Parents cannot rely upon their own life experience to guide their kids through school, because the school discipline from their generation has been replaced by criminally prosecuting children for misbehavior.
Common sense is absent when it comes to criminally charging children. Two kids getting into a fight, results in criminal assault charges. Name calling results in criminal harassment charges. A kid makes a simple bad choice and they are criminally charged.
Discipline is being taken out of the hands of parents. Prosecutors, with little life experience, are making decisions that have life-long consequences for the children they are prosecuting.
How Can You Help Your Child Who is Facing Egregious Prosecution
Being arrested or referred to juvenile court—even once—can have a lifelong impact.
If your child is facing criminal prosecution, even for conduct that occurred while at school, they need a legitimate Criminal Defense Attorney. The only recourse for a child being wrongly or excessively charged as a criminal is to hire an attorney who knows how to fight within the juvenile court system. A skilled Criminal Defense Attorney can argue common sense to a judge and have charges thrown out.
Often there is a positive leaning experience that can come from school discipline being imposed. Accountability is important for kids to learn, and those lessons can come from a parents or the school in the form of discipline and punishment. But when school discipline is substituted with criminal prosecution, and the government threatens to take away your child’s freedom, the child’s future must be protected by a legitimate Criminal Defense Attorney who knows what they are doing.
Prosecutors do not reduce charges or throw out cases because they are friendly with a Criminal Defense Attorney. Children do not get charges dropped or reduced because they apologize, plead guilty, and beg for mercy. Charges are reduced or thrown out because a Criminal Defense Attorney has a reputation for winning, and the prosecutor does not want to lose.
Ben has represented many kids who faced serious criminal charges under these types of absurd circumstances. After demanding a jury trial and preparing the case for trial most of these case are dismissed. For the remaining cases that do go to trial, Ben has excellent results and is very proud to have won the majority of his cases that go to trial.
