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In order to tackle the problem of cyber-bullying in an integrated and coherent manner which can combine legal intervention, education, and regulation from the telecommunications industry, this chapter advocates an alternative approach of co-regulation based on children's rights. Part 18.1 begins by discussing the nature, manifestation, prevalence, and harm of cyber-bullying, with an illustration of notorious examples of cyber-bullying in different countries. Part 18.2 examines the current legal attempts in the United Kingdom and the United States to tackle the problem and the inadequacies of the positivist legal approach. Part 18.3 argues that a co-regulatory model based on children's rights will provide a viable and more effective solution to the problem of cyber-bullying, in which schools and internet services providers (ISPs) play an essential role. In particular, the ISP should develop its code of practice within a model of compliance, of having a mechanism for reporting, follow-up, and notice and take-down of harmful materials.

This chapter will set the stage for examining and addressing bullying with a discussion on the pervasiveness of bullying of children and adolescents around the world along with an overview of the short term and potential long lasting effects of bullying. Also included will be a review of the confusion and controversies surrounding the term “bullying.” The term “bullying” typically is defined as a form of aggression which can be direct or indirect and includes physical, verbal or psychological and relational acts, that is intentional and occurs in a relationship characterized by a power imbalance, and is repeated over time. Notwithstanding the complexity of bullying and ensuing difficulties in defining and recognizing bullying, the damage caused by bullying can be considerable and far reaching. The adult-child relationship in particular influences the ability of children and youth to manage in many areas, including bullying situations.

Both national and cross-national estimates indicate that bullying and victimization are fairly prevalent among school-age children and adolescents, with prevalence estimates varying for 3% to 37% for bullies and from 9% to 32% for victimization. Moreover, recent estimates suggest that such rates may have increased since 1999 and subsequently stabilized, with an average estimate of about 10%. Both children who are bullies and children who are victims of bullying show elevated rates of various indicators of psychosocial distress. This chapter evaluates school-based strategies aimed at reducing bullying and bullying-related incidents of victimization.

This chapter reviews the most well-researched, evidence-based antibullying interventions: involvement of all the stakeholders in a school, prevention through life skills curricula, problem-solving approaches, and those that focus on rules and consequences. Two factors emerge with clarity: (1) the exact components of the program do not matter as much as the quality and thoroughness with which the interventions are implemented; and (2) given the potentially severe consequences of bullying, it is a moral imperative to continue to implement such programs and to formulate and revise the programs based on solid evidence.

Humor, like ritual, may sometimes license otherwise offensive insults. When and why? The special genre of insult humor, including roasts, is considered along with Freud's account of the role of collusion in tendentious humor broadly conceived. When is it wrong to laugh? Satire, teasing, and bullying sometimes take the ridicule in insult humor to the extremes of aggression.

This chapter orients the reader to the current biological models of delinquent psychopathology and provides an overview of the biological literature; including heritability, psychophysiology, neurobiology, and endocrinology related to the development of persistent criminal behavior in children and adolescents. The four areas of crime-related psychopathology discussed are early-onset conduct disorder, juvenile psychopathy, bullying, and sex offending. Research is presented in connection with widely accepted biological models of behavior. This chapter also highlights the strengths and limitations of the existing literature, consolidates this literature to identify patterns of convergence and divergence across disorders, and suggests areas for future research.

Children are arguably the most criminally victimized people in American society. This chapter shows the underappreciated scope of child victimization and suggests some of the reasons why children are so victimized. It also illustrates the unfortunate situation that public priorities appear to have given more attention to children as offenders than children as victims, and suggests some of the sources of this bias. It suggests that the study of child victimization is overly fragmented and proposes the more holistic and comprehensive field of Developmental Victimology as a solution.

It is widely presumed that when a child is hit by a peer or sibling, the episodes do not have an impact in the same way in what would otherwise be considered an “assault” or a “violent crime”. But the basis for this is a series of assumptions that do not hold up under careful scrutiny. Research finds that younger children’s peer and sibling victimizations are indeed not less serious than the older youth on the dimensions of injury, being hit with an object that could cause injury, or being victimized on multiple occasions. Younger children and older youth also had similar trauma symptom levels associated to both peer and sibling victimization.

This chapter presents a socio-ecological model of school violence in context. The model emphasizes the importance of the school as the context of violence. The model includes multiple different types of violence including verbal, physical, and sexual. The chapter clarifies the conceptual differences between bullying and school violence. According to the model, schools are embedded within social-ecological nested contexts. External nested contexts include culture and ethnicity, neighborhood (e.g., poverty and crime), and the family (e.g., parental practices). The internal context of the school includes structural characteristics such as size, awareness of violence, policies, student-teacher relationships, students participation, and dangerous locations and times. Victimization is the result of an interaction between the student characteristics (such as age and gender), the outside context (e.g., family poverty), and the school's internal context (e.g., adult supervision). The comprehensive theory of school violence includes the multiple perspectives of students, teachers, principals, and parents, and encompasses how victimization relates to the emotional, cognitive, and social domains.

Rarely does the subject of power and abusive power come up for open discussion in social service environments and yet it is a critical component of any organizational setting. As communication breaks down, errors compound and the situation feels increasingly out of control, organizational leaders become more controlling and authoritarian. Under these circumstances, workplace bullying is likely to increase at all levels and organizations may become vulnerable to petty tyrants. As the organization becomes more hierarchical and autocratic there is a progressive and simultaneous isolation of leaders and a “dumbing down” of staff, with an accompanying “learned helplessness” and loss of critical thinking skills. The organization and the individuals in it become highly risk-avoidant. Efforts to empower workers may pay only lip service to true participatory processes. Although the importance of organizational democracy has long been recognized, true efforts to implement workplace democracy have often become forms of bogus empowerment and bullies are given license to intimidate other people.

This chapter presents an overview of mobbing in workplaces, schools, and other organizations, and it situates mobbing within a historical context while distinguishing it from bullying. Unlike bullying, mobbing is identified as a systemic phenomenon involving the interplay of individual, group, and organizational dynamics. Detailed examples of workplace mobbing and school mobbing are provided with accompanying analysis and key points. From a historical perspective, the Salem Witch Hunt and the McMartin Preschool sexual abuse case are analyzed and identified as mobbings. It is argued that overreliance on explanatory frameworks focused on the individual lead to inadequate understandings of mobbing and represent examples of the fundamental attribution error.

This chapter examines the beginnings of the study and research of workplace and school mobbing in the 1960s and 1970s, and traces its continuing development through the 2000s. The work of ethologist Lorenz in explaining animal mobbing and the importation of the term “mobbing” by Heinemann to refer to aggression by children against children and its potential lethality is described. Also examined is the foundational work of Heinz Leymann in researching the health effects of workplace mobbing on its victims. . Leymann’s mobbing phase model, beginning with an initiating conflict and concluding with the expulsion of a mobbing victim from the organization is also reviewed. Since multiple professional and research vocabularies have been used to describe interpersonal aggression and abuse within workplaces and schools, this chapter also includes a review of research about workplace and school bullying. Studies of prevalence rates for both workplace and school mobbing are presented.

This chapter provides comprehensive definitions for both school mobbing and workplace mobbing and distinguishes “mobbing” from the more commonly used term “bullying.” A conceptual framework for understanding bullying and mobbing as occurring along a continuum related to the degree of involvement of group and organizational dynamics and to the severity of the negative consequences for the victims is presented. It is proposed that mobbing and bullying represent different forms of interpersonal aggression. Negative acts or aggressive behaviors directed toward a target, the duration of the negative acts, intent to do harm, power imbalance, organizational involvement, and negative consequences for victims related to health, welfare, and job are key definitional elements that are emphasized differentially depending upon whether the term “bullying” or “mobbing” is used. In this chapter, each of these key definitional elements is presented and examined.

This chapter reviews a range of risk and protective factors relevant to school bullies and victims. Building on the work by David Farrington and others, it stresses the replicated efficacy of bullying prevention studies. It shows that whereas earlier studies have focused on the impact of bullying on externalizing behaviors, studies also document the impact on internalizing problems. It make a case that longitudinal studies should better examine risk and protective factors related to individuals’ careers in school bullying. In addition, it is argued that future intervention studies focusing on bullying should not just see the removal of risk factors as a central management strategy, but that prevention and intervention programs should include the enhancement of protective factors.