Agreed in every way.
But what if punishing bullies doesn't work? Would that change anything?
Let us begin with why punishment seems good for us as adults who genuinely want to put an end to bullying:
* Firstly it signifies that we take the issue seriously. A punishment shows what we think of a bully - and therefore of bullying.
* Secondly, it makes us feel that justice has been served, that the bully has got his or her comeuppance.
* It satisfies our psychological need to do something, to feel that we are not powerless, that we can be effective in some way.
* Lastly, and less worthily, it helps to cover our arses. We can't be accused of doing nothing if we have inflicted a suitably severe punishment.
All of this is good and it comes naturally from the feeling that we have done the right thing. But you will notice that none of this does anything for the victim. And if it actually makes things worse then we are making ourselves feel righteous at the victim's expense. If that is true then our need to punish is essentially selfish.
But wait, surely the whole point of punishing bullies is to put them off, to deter them and thus to help the victim by stopping the bullying. Well, that's the theory - but does it? It feels like it ought to and the notion of punishment fitting the crime is deeply embedded but if it doesn't, if in fact it makes things worse, then we have to do some serious rethinking.
To me the evidence is absolutely clear, our conventional, instinctive reaction to bullying, to make the bullies feel something of what they have inflicted on their victims, clearly does not work. In general bullying Is still rife, it is an epidemic, and with the advent of social media it is in many ways getting worse. And in individual cases punishment does nothing to put things right. In fact by driving the bullying underground, punishment only makes it harder to discover and harder to deal with.
* In principle it could be argued that we are only perpetuating the dynamic of the bully; that we are trying to bully the bully into stopping bullying. Which is ironic.
* In practice it forces us to focus on the details of exactly what has been done, whether we have any evidence or whether the accusations can be proved. We become absorbed in issues of whether we believe the victim, whether there is any exaggeration or outright fantasising going on, whether the victim has in any way brought the trouble on themselves. All of this is tedious and painful and in reality a distraction from the fact that somebody is suffering and that suffering has to be stopped.
* It reinforces and exaggerates the gulf between bully and victim. We tend to have a very simple, black and white model in or heads in which one evil bully is inflicting terror on one innocent but pathetic victim and we impose this model on situations that are often quite different. We ignore the complexities of real life in which the bully may themselves be bullied and demeaned in a different context and may find mockery and threats perfectly natural. We ignore the way that we can all, kids and adults alike, convince ourselves that we are not bullies; that WE are only having a bit of fun or that THEY are weird or annoying in some way and deserve to be mocked. Even more we ignore the way that bullying often stems from a friendship group that has gone sour, a group of quite ordinary kids who have fallen out and started a vendetta that they don't know how to get out of. We ignore the shades of grey and impose our simple blacks and whites - and in doing so we make the bullies more bullyish and the victims more victimish and that does neither of them any good.
* Most importantly it raises the stakes. The prospect of punishment will make the bully even more determined to intimidate the victim into silence and the victim will be even more determined to suffer in silence because discovery will only make things worse. Whatever punishment the bully receives you can be sure that they will want the victim to pay for it - and that will only intensify the whole vicious dynamic and keep it further away from the prying eyes of adults.
So if punishment doesn't work, what would 'working' look like?
In individual cases we are looking for something that stops suffering. Something that takes us rapidly from a place where a children are being hurt by their peers to a place where they are happy and secure and well integrated. And more widely we want to prevent suffering, we want to produce a culture in which unkindness, intimidation and mockery are always exposed and are always unacceptable.
Naturally everyone wants to achieve this perfect state of universal empathy. My argument is simply that if we are serious then the peculiar, secretive dynamics of bullying mean that we have to let go of our natural instinct to punish and think of something more creative.
The alternative is well known and understood. More in Part 3.
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