Cyber Bullying and General Information - Volume 1, March 2014 | Page 12

Police Involvement in Cyber Bullying: What Parents Can Expect
By: Ryan Broll
Ryan Broll is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. His doctoral dissertation examines the ways in
which parents, teachers and school administrators, and police officers prevent and respond to cyber bullying.
In recent years, growing concerns about cyber bullying been met
with new laws in Canada and the United States. For example, as of
January 2013, 47 American states had updated or proposed updates
to their bullying laws to include reference to electronic harassment.
Similarly, 21 states and the federal government had specifically
included “cyber bullying” in their enacted or proposed legislation.
Notably, 10 of 21 states (48%) with laws specifically addressing cyber
bullying include criminal sanctions for bullies. In Canada, several
municipalities have passed by-laws that are meant to combat cyber
bullying (although most of these by-laws are considered symbolic,
since tickets are rarely issued). In addition, just four months after the
death of Rehtaeh Parsons, the Nova Scotia government—