Only the criminal law reaches offenders that schools and platforms cannot

The argument

A second argument concerns who has the power to stop it. Proponents point out that a school's authority runs to its own pupils, mostly during term and largely on its premises, so it can do little about abuse from a former pupil, a child at another school or an adult. Platforms can remove a post or an account, but an anonymous offender opens another, and the company has no duty to the victim and no power to compel anything of the person responsible. Parents may deal with it seriously or refuse to accept that their child is involved, and nobody can require them to act. Proponents argue that only a criminal offence supplies the missing powers. Police can require a platform to disclose who holds an account, preserve evidence before it is deleted, and attach conditions that forbid contact with the victim, and a court can enforce those conditions if they are broken. None of these is available to a head teacher or a moderator. On this account the gap is not a failure of effort by schools but a limit on their jurisdiction, and the conduct most likely to be severe is precisely the conduct that falls outside it. The argument is also made about what the law communicates. Proponents hold that conduct left to internal policies is understood by those involved as misbehaviour rather than as wrongdoing, and that the difference affects how seriously parents, children and institutions treat it. Making the conduct an offence states publicly that persistent abuse of another person is not a private dispute between families, gives victims a reason to report rather than endure it, and establishes a record that allows repetition to be recognised when the same offender moves on to someone else.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Opponents argue that the powers described already exist where the conduct is serious, since harassment and threat offences support exactly the same disclosure, evidence preservation and non-contact conditions. Creating a further offence to reach what is left over means reaching conduct nobody has yet shown to be criminal in nature. They also dispute the expressive claim: involving police in schoolyard disputes tends to make schools reluctant to handle matters themselves and victims reluctant to report against friends, so the effect on reporting may run the other way. The deepest objection is proportion, since the instrument proposed for teenage cruelty is the one society reserves for its most serious condemnation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The gap described is real but belongs to cases that are already criminal, since abuse from adults, strangers and anonymous accounts typically amounts to harassment or threat. [Rejecting P2] Those powers of disclosure, evidence preservation and non-contact conditions already attach to existing offences, so no new provision is needed to obtain them. [Rejecting P3] Involving police tends to make schools reluctant to record incidents and victims reluctant to report against friends, so the effect on reporting may run opposite to the one claimed. [Rejecting C] The conclusion asks for the instrument society reserves for its gravest condemnation to be applied to adolescent cruelty, which is disproportionate even if the powers would help.