Reply to Student attacked with taser in Oakton HS locker room

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was just about to mention restorative justice policies, thanks.[/quote]

Explain how this works? Does the victim have to come face to face with the kids who assaulted him? If so, is that one-on-one or what? If not, that would be very intimidating. If so, that would be intimidating and very time-consuming for him. [/quote]

No, what happens is that the school tells the family they are dealing with it, so police isn't called, and the school then takes its sweet time to interrogate the main people involved and may confuse them thoroughly, since they are not trained to conduct such interviews. The school may handle any evidence and tamper with it, again because they are not trained to preserve evidence. School systems in the area have restorative justice policies, which means they believe minor perpetrators may have adverse life circumstances that affect their sense of right and wrong, and if given additional chances to redeem themselves, have better chances of becoming law-abiding adults. The result is that a lot of time is wasted before the victim's family realizes that the perpetrators will not be punished adequately, and the victim will likely not be separated from them in class. Then if/when the family finally decides to call the police, the investigators have to deal with witnesses who may have forgotten the exact timeline of events, because they were confused by the earlier interviews with school staff and some time has already elapsed. Videos that were circulated have had ample time to be deleted, and any physical evidence may have been washed off the floor (blood, etc) or otherwise handled in a way that makes it inadmissible in a court of law.

This is not because school systems purposefully set out to flout investigative processes and deny protections to victims. It's because there is zero clarity for administrators and staff to distinguish between minor events that should be appropriately handled by the school system, which understandably tends to err on the side of leniency, since they are dealing with children, and major events that require immediate police investigation.

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