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by pragerfan March 3, 2018 According to liberal thought, minorities "over-represented" in prisons (i.e. greater proportion in jail than in the general population) means the justice system has a "disparate impact" on minorities, e.g. blacks or hispanics. To promote better "racial outcomes" school administrators want more minority kids to graduate without a criminal record so that they can get jobs. Administrators also want to reduce arrest rates at schools. They cut a deal with the police where cops don't arrest kids for assault and other crimes. They are then recognized for low school arrest and expulsion rates. Punishing young minority criminals for crimes has a inherent "disparate racial impact" and doesn't produce the proper "racial outcomes." This monster committed multiple previous crimes for which the police refused to arrest or charge him as a direct result of policies enacted by the Broward County schools for the express purpose of reducing statistics related to suspension, expulsion, arrest and incarceration. If this murderer had been arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated, he most likely wouldn't have committed 17 murders because he would have failed a background check necessary to legally purchase firearms. His illegally obtaining a firearm would have undercut entirely the premise for more gun control laws: by definition, no law stops anyone who chooses to act illegally. When students commit crimes, instead of law and order being imposed, liberals running K-12 education employ an alternative to punishment called "restorative justice." The Broward County school district admits: Rather than focusing on punishment, restorative justice seeks to repair the harm done," the district explains. Indeed, this isn't really punishment at all. It's therapy. Delinquents (i.e. criminals) gather in "healing circles" with counselors, and sometimes even the victims of their crime, and "talk about their feelings" and "root causes" of their anger.Restorative justice is meaningless, because it doesn't improve the individual. Punishment does. Here's another example of school violence from right in our own backyard here in Minnesota, committed by a black student. In St. Paul, Minn., a high school science teacher was "beaten and choked out" by a 16-year-old student, who allegedly came up behind him, called him a "f---king white cracker," and put him in a stranglehold, before bashing his head into a concrete wall and pavement. The student, Fon'Tae O'Bannon, got 90 days of electronic home monitoring and anger management counseling for the December 2015 attack.You've got to be kidding — 90 days of "home monitoring" for knocking a teacher senseless and sending him to the hospital? That's it? What do kids say to teachers? In New York they say, "We can't get suspended — we don't care what you say." When I was in school 30 years ago, if a student hit a teacher, he was gone — kicked out of school, never to be seen there again. Today, students hit teachers and send them to hospitals with relative impunity, and that's just one example. The monster who murdered students at MSD had threatened other students, put a gun to others' heads, brought bullets to school, and who knows what else. Lipservice was paid to his crimes and his crimes were ignored. Profoundly misguided and unwise policies have exchanged arrest and punishment for therapeutic "restorative justice" so that arrest and incarceration statistics look better on the superintendent's power point deck. In liberals' quest to improve statistics, 17 people at Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High became statistics. Principals are also getting paid thousands of dollars in bonuses for low suspension and expulsion rates so it's now in their financial interests to keep kids in school even if they commit crimes. Liberals argue that money corrupts. It does. Cutting deals with police saves time and money and results in big payouts for school administrators. Corruption is a win-win — except if you're among the dead at Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High. As late as the 1980s students brought rifles to school for participating on rifle teams. Discipline standards were very high and we had no issues with school mass shootings. 30 years later, we've exchanged rifle teams and firearms training for gun-free zones, and meaningful discipline for nice-looking power point decks supporting racial outcomes. #NeverAgain and #MSDStrong crowd — are school shootings really guns' fault? Are they really the NRA's fault? Or have you been duped by the CNN and the rest of the Left, blinded to the widespread rot and corruption in your schools? Yes, adults did fail you, students of Marjory Stoneman-Douglas. But it wasn't the adults in the NRA. It wasn't the adults who are responsible gun owners. It wasn't the adults who are law-abiding citizens. The adults who failed you are those who conspired to allow the diseases of corruption and lax discipline to infect your school. They did this because they believe in left-wing progressivist principles that place therapeutics and bonuses above punishment, and ultimately, above your lives. It is not too late. Wake up, and train your energy and passion where they can truly make a difference. |