In letters to the editor, forum posts, phone calls and e-mails, everyone seems ready to throw the book at the youngsters behind bomb threats at Monroe High School and other schools.

Indeed, our own editorial board concluded as much; that opinion will be in Sunday’s Evening News.

The rationale seems to be that we need a significant deterrent. As a community, we need to make it clear that bomb threats are not a prank - they’re a serious crime.

I wonder, though, whether teen-agers pay attention to deterrents. It seems to me that young people simply don’t believe they’ll get caught - it’s in their DNA. “It won’t happen to me,” is part of the teen-ager credo.

Justice will be done. The culprits will be punished. But will it deter others in the future? I wonder.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Local issues, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.