When they make childhood criminal…

On the heels of the discussion earlier this week in New York City on a charter school that is using orange t-shirts similar to prison uniformsto discipline students, comes a story of a 9-year-old Portland girl lead away in handcuffs, photographed and fingerprinted after police questioned her in relation to a fight at a youth club.

The incident has provoked citizens on the police oversight board and youth justice advocates to press for new guidelines on taking kids under 10 into custody without a juvenile court order.

Well and good to look out for the under-10 set (10-years-and-a-day, mind you, and the handcuffs and booking would still presumably be allowed), but the New York and Portland stories, along with numerous other incidents around the country, seem to indicate that over a decade after an authoritative study, the U.S. has still failed to learn the lessons of “scared straight” — namely, that scared straight programs don’t work.

Or worse.

The study, “’Scared Straight’ and Other Juvenile Awareness Programs for Preventing Juvenile Delinquency,” which was updated in 2013, actually showed that kids put through these programs are 7 percentmore likely to commit crimes than children who didn’t participate.

While neither the NYC nor Portland cases are technically “scared straight” programs, the approach stems from the same place — the idea that fear, intimidation and humiliation are the best teachers of proper civil behavior.

It is perhaps even more interesting through the lens of the growing anti-bullying movement. Is bullying under the color of authority somehow a more positive force than peer-to-peer bullying?

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Any views expressed on The Scrutineer are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.