>>>>It's funny that you say that. I got back not long ago from driving my younger daughter up to her mom's house for a last one day visit before returning to college. We had a wide ranging conversation (the car is always the best place to talk with both her and her sister) and somehow the police came up. I don't remember how it did. She expressed what I thought was a cynical attitude towards police. She got kind of a raw deal from on overzealous traffic patrol officer last year but that doesn't seem like enough to explain it. I said I respect police officers unless they give me reason not to.
>>>
>>>1 in 3 Americans under the age of 23 have been arrested...if you're that age and a black male the number is MUCH MUCH higher.
>>>I consider that a huge problem. Now days that's how the cops want to handle pretty much any little problem - and could care less of the social implications. I think your daughters cynical attitude might be well justified as close to 1/3 or her friends have probably been arrested for something stupid. I suppose if you start locking up people when they're young it will help job security if your are a cop or work in a jail or prison (some of which are for-profit privately owned!) or one of the zillion industries that depend on a steady stream of inmates...oh gee did I sound cynical?
>>>
>>>http://news.yahoo.com/one-third-young-u-adults-arrested-study-164839070.html
>>
>>Just want to point out that even if this study is correct, it's probably not the case that close to a third of Mike's daughter's friends have been arrested. My suspicion is that this is anywhere close to evenly distributed across the population.
>>
>>My anecdotal evidence is that, to the best of knowledge, none of the young people who used to hang out in my house when my kids were still at home has been arrested. Wait, that's not true. One of my older son's friends was arrested protesting in NY during the Republican convention there. He was a law student there to observe police behavior and got caught up in one of those cases where they wrapped a bunch of protestors up in plastic fencing. All charges later dropped, and he's now a practicing attorney. So one out of the couple of dozen kids who used to come around regularly.
>>
>>Tamar
>
>All valid points Tamar...but how would you know if these kids had been arrested or not? I suspect in a lot of instances the kid would not go around talking about it too much - particularly to their friend's mother.

If it had happened when they were still here in HS, I would've heard about it. I knew a lot of the parents and was actively involved at the school (in fact, PTO president the last two years we were there). Yeah, could have happened while they were in college, I guess.

But my real point (despite my typo) was that the experience isn't evenly distributed. In some neighborhoods, practically every kid will have had bad experiences with the police, while in others, very few will. (And no, I don't think that reflects only the behavior of the kids in question.)

>Perhaps it would be interesting if you asked your kid(s) how many of their peers has been arrested before. The theme of the study seemed to be this..."...They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past..." - which I think is going the the wrong direction.

If I remember, I'll ask my boys about it.

>As you pointed out I'm sure demographics play a part in this - however they "...analyzed data from a nationally-representative youth survey conducted between 1997 and 2008. A group of more than 7,000 adolescents age 12 to 16 in the study's first year filled out the annual surveys with questions including if and when they had ever been arrested..." - so this seems to be a large study they did. Anyway I can understand a young person being cynical towards the police because these numbers are simply ridiculous - lock up 1/3 of the youth? REALLY? Like OMG!

Yeah, I'm with you here. I think we're really doing society a disservice with the punitive attitude that's so prevalent today.

Tamar