Zero Tolerance?

There is a news story today about an 11 year old boy who was arrested and locked up in a cell, fingerprinted, and not allowed to see his parents, without actually having committed any crime.  (See the full article here: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/11-year-old-co-boy-arrested-for-innapropriate-stick-figure-drawing/)   Shocked?  So am I.  This student, on the advice of his therapist, chose to deal with feelings of anger not by acting out but rather by drawing a picture as an outlet for his feelings.  He drew a stick figure picture of himself with a gun, and four other people with the words "teachers must die" over them.  This does sound pretty disturbing.  But what happens next is even more disturbing.  He was about to throw out the picture when the teacher caught him and asked to see it.  She then sent him to the principle, the principle contacted the police, and later that day police came to his home and arrested him.

There have been a few other examples of extreme overreaction with zero tolerance polities.  To name a couple, in 2000 in Texas, a 13 year old boy was required to write a scary story for a Halloween-based assignment. His story involved a character who shot students at a school. Consequently, the teenager was arrested and spent six days in jail before police confirmed that no crime was committed.  In that same year, in Florida, a 14 year old special needs student was referred to the police after the principal discovered that the child allegedly stole $2 from a classmate. The child was charged with “strong-armed robbery” and was held in an adult jail for six weeks. When a CBS “60 Minutes” news crew arrived to report this case, the charges pending were dropped.      

Since public schools implemented their Zero Tolerance policy, they say there will be swift and severe consequences for violence.  Bringing a knife to school, or getting into a fist fight, will cause a student to be arrested.  They made this policy because the violence in schools was getting out of hand.  But now I think Zero Tolerance Policy is getting out of hand.  As the therapist of this child said, "handcuffing an 11 year old and putting him in a cell over something like this is “quite an overreaction” and does much more harm than good."

Is Zero Tolerance Policy possible when dealing with children?  Children need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.  This incident is an example how "one size fits all" policy does not work with children.  It sounds logical in theory to say we have zero tolerance for violence, but if that translates into arresting an 11 year old boy, and scaring the living daylights out of him, locking him up in a cell and not allowing him to see his parents, while he thinks he will spend the rest of his life in prison and never go home or see his family again, well that sounds pretty violent to me.