This blog post was inspired by a story I head today about a six year old boy who was arrested for kicking his teacher in Indiana. The boy had a prior offense against him for similar actions and this time the teacher called the police instead of parents. Interestingly enough this trend is all but uncommon, from 2009-2010 90,000 students were arrested in New Mexico and in 2010 300,000 students were given misdemeanors. These figures include children like the six year old from Indiana who is now facing battery charges. I believe this should raise a few questions. Why are we seeing a spike in child arrests lately? What is the reason lurking behind violent children acting out in school? Is it coming from the home or from their school surroundings that makes these children criminals? 
     Another issue that needs to be taken into consideration is that the six year old boy was escorted out of his school in handcuffs. This is a major concern to me because of the psychological trauma that the child may face. Think of the emotions that must have been running through that kids head as he was removed from his kindergarten class in handcuffs in front of all of his peers. If I was a parent of any child at this school I would be extremely upset at how the situation was handled. I believe parents should be called before the police only because of the emotional problems that children may face in their futures if a similar situation would happened to them. 
      Another point I would like to add is that statistically speaking the earlier a person is introduced into the criminal system, the more likely that person is to re-enter. If it were possible I think it would be interesting to do a follow up story in maybe ten or twenty years from now and assess the child's, now adult, juridical situation. I'm taking a class at my university entitled "deviant behavior" and we learned about labeling theories and how when a person is labeled as a criminal they feel obligated to maintain that deviant status. I also know that it is very hard to break the mold of a given label because one will start to believe they are who their label condemns them to be. Multiple sociological studies have been done on this subject and would not like to see this six year old become a statistic. 
     To sum up, I'm not sure what is causing the flux in violent children or why they are increasingly being arrested, but I would like to see more research put into this matter so that children like that of the six year old from Indiana will not be scarred from any more psychological trauma.