Read Arrest-Proof Yourself for Free Online Page B

officers, juvenile judges, public defenders, guardians ad litem , caseworkers, foster parents, and government psychologists are like kindly schoolmarms and wise old preachers who gently guide wayward youth to truth, enlightenment, and the American way.
    Wrong. I work with these people every day. They try hard. They want to do the right thing. All of them, without exception, are overwhelmed with cases; underpaid; and restricted by a web of complex, confusing, and frequently contradictory bureaucratic procedures. All of them together, the entire village, cannot care for children as well as the most mediocre parents. Getting into the social services plantation sometimes means getting help. Often, however, it means getting your brain fried with drugs and then being dumped into juvenile detention facilities and foster homes.
    Always it means that the state will gather an enormous dossier of information on you. A gigantic file, your “jacket,” stuffed with medical reports and “expert” opinions of your neuroses, psychoses, hang-ups, allergies, food preferences, IQ, and personality, will follow you around for life. You’ll be officially certified as damaged goods. You’ll be in the computer, in the system, for life, even if you never actually get arrested. Juvenile criminal records are generally separated from adult records, but in most states prosecutors can get to them. This means that, when you’re on trial years later as an adult, a prosecutor can point out to the judge what a loser you’ve been practically since the day you got the diapers strapped on.
    The social services system and its affiliate, the public schools, are obsessed with definitions of what is normal. This definition is narrowed every day by new studies, new expert opinions, and batteries of ever more subtle psychological tests. Anyone outside the acceptable range of behaviors is, by definition, abnormal and subject to state intervention, supervision, and labeling. I call this the tyranny of normalcy.
    Let me give you an example. Years ago, children who got distracted, ran around a lot, slept very little, and did several things at once were called jittery, pesky, or a handful. Now such children are defined as suffering from attention-deficit disorder. Supposedly, 7 percent of American children are so diseased. Most are given powerful psychoactive drugs. Some of these, like Ritalin, are related to amphetamines. Others are tranquilizers, antipsychotics, and neurotransmitter inhibitors, which were never approved for use by children and whose long-term effects are unknown. All of these drugs, without exception, are restricted, scheduled narcotics. Many are addictive, and all are sold illegally on the street. Possession of any of them without the prescription in your possession will land you in jail. When adults take tranquilizers for a decade or more, they are considered addicts. When children take them, they are considered normal. Of course the kids don’t complain. They’re drugged.
    Now I’m going to say some things that will enrage 52 percent of the population. Ladies, prepare yourselves! Launch your word processors for angry letters and e-mails. Get out the spray paint for protest signs and banners, and dust off those marching shoes. Ready? Here it is: The social services plantation is staffed predominantly by women. Its attitudes are female, and, most importantly, its definition of normalcy is female.
    For young men, this is a disaster. The system defines many innate male behaviors as abnormal and sick. For example, the social services plantation’s female overseers (teachers, social workers, counselors, psychologists) stigmatize boys for fighting, throwing and kicking things, teasing, resisting authority, etc. Yet these things are what little boys do . These behaviors are the play that become, in a man, fighting and hunting skills. Of course, such behaviors need to be socialized and controlled, since we are no longer Neolithic hunter-gatherers,