JUSTICE BEFORE MERCY

Mar 31, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A teacher’s cellular phone went missing a few weeks ago while she was in her classroom. The entire class was detained and searched. The phone was not found.
A call was made to the police. The police arrived and the students were transported down to the station.
The cellular phone that went missing must have been an expensive phone. Either that or the teacher that lost the phone must have been very special to have had the police take the students down to the station for questioning.
But how did the students get to the station? Were they taken in a police vehicle and if not then who bore the cost of them being transported to that location?
If the phone was not found on any of the children during the search at school, then why were the children taken down to the station? Why could they not be questioned at the school? Was it because of the fact that the fear of being placed in the lockups would have elicited answers about the whereabouts of the phone?
More fundamentally is why were the police summoned in the first place? If schools cannot exercise the degree of control over children, if when something goes missing the police have to be summoned, it does not say much about the degree of control that schools are exercising over their students.
So far, neither the Ministry of Education nor any of the child protection activists that are quick to jump on other bandwagons have said anything about this situation of children being transported to the police station simply because some teacher lost her cellular phone.
The police also need to explain their actions in hauling the children down to the station.
The police however were quite in order when they intervened after a riotous mob of school children invaded a school looking for a child whom someone from the mob had a problem with. This is the sort of threat which requires police intervention, not the loss of a cell phone. The latter should be dealt with internally.
An external invasion by a gang from another school requires police intervention and criminal prosecution. This shows that the problem of school violence is far more serious than school theft and it is hoped that this time around no connections will be pulled to allow those guilty of riotous conduct to escape punishment.
While they are still school children, they were behaving like seasoned bullies and therefore must face the consequences of their actions. If they had found the person they were looking for then imagine what would have been his or her fate. That person may have been seriously wounded or worse.
An example must be made of these children but at the same time they along with their children must be given some counseling.
The parents will have a lot of questions to answer also, because no ordinary child will join his peers, hire vehicles twice to go and invade another school to look for a student with whom they have a problem.
That is unacceptable behaviour which must be met by the full force of the law.
At the school where the cellular phone was stolen, the children no doubt would have spoken about that incident for weeks after. But that will eventually subside and the matter will be forgotten.
But when a child experiences terror in a place where he is supposed to be protected, that child will suffer for a long time after. Children should associate school time with learning and fun, not with invasion.
The authorities need to act and act swiftly and while they should temper justice with mercy, justice has to come first and justice has to be a deterrent for any such acts in the future.
The kids that went to look for that student were not interested in showing mercy to that child. They went there to harm him and they must be punished for their actions and placed in a remedial programme.

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JUSTICE BEFORE MERCY

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