OCR Text |
Show School and fM Home cp j Dr. Daryl J. McCarty Executive Secretory Utah Education Association A sixth-grade class in Utah has an urgent message for some would-be criminals. The message is simply this: Anyone thinking about committing com-mitting a crime with a deadly weapon in Utah would do well to forget the idea. That's because the recently-adjourned legislature enacted a law which mandates man-dates an extra year on the sentence of anyone convicted of using a deadly weapon in the commission of a crime. And it's all because of a sixth-grade class at Fremont Elementary School in the Granite School District. During a class on government gover-nment one day last fall, the youngsters grew concerned about increases in crime. They discussed a Florida law which slaps an extra year in prison on persons convicted convic-ted of using a deadly weapon in a stick-up. So they wrote to Florida officials about it. Some of the officials estimated that six months after af-ter the law was enacted, such crimes had dropped by 30 per cent. The kids decided to see if they couldn't get a similar law enacted in Utah. Their teacher, Clay Petersen, invited in-vited State Rep. Norman Bangerter to visit the class. He talked to the students and agreed to sponsor the bill. The students enlisted students from Otis Weeks' class next door to poll Utahns and test popular support sup-port for the bill. Those students, who won a measure of fame for the accuracy of their predictions in the last election, found 89 per cent support for the bill. One good lesson the students was criticism. They found that some people objected ob-jected strongly to their bill. This nudged them to study it harder for flaws. Students testified at committee hearings for their bill. It passed in the Legislature, and Gov. Scott Matheson signed it. But the students are not satisfied. A law on the books has little deterrent value if nobody knows about it. So they are working on a publicity campaign to inform would-be holdup artists that when they get caught, they'll get an extra year in the slammer. One student puts it this way: "If you can't spend the time, don't commit the crime." |