There is a criminal law overhaul in Missouri and the 1,000-page legislation is confusing and scaring residents in the state, especially students of Missouri schools.

The most expansive changes to Missouri’s criminal code since the 1970’s went into effect January 1. The biggest change in the law is the creation of a class E felony. The purpose of this change is to more effectively tier punishments for criminal offenses. When the news broke of this change, the Hazelwood and Ferguson-Florissant school districts issued statements notifying parents and students that students could now be charged with felonies for getting into fights at school or harassing other students. The editorial board of The Jag considers this law to be ridiculous.

What now falls under a class E felony is third-degree assault and, in addition to that, harassment has been upgraded from a misdemeanor to a class E felony.

According to St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “under the new law, a person who “knowingly causes physical injury to another person” will have committed the felony of third-degree assault.”

Also, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Harassment will be a felony, rather than a misdemeanor, if the victim suffers “emotional distress” from an act committed with that purpose.”

A simple look to the impacts of this new legislation will exemplify what exactly is ridiculous about this new law.

Firstly, it seems that the law will perpetuate the school-to-prison pipeline, which legislators claim to be combating. The addition of the proposition of a felony to school discipline has runoff effects of tainting a student for the rest of his or her life. In a criminal court of law, a drop of doubt justifies a guilty verdict and that is being likened to the lives of students. A single mistake freshman year could follow a student for the rest of his or her life and possibly prove detrimental in the future. What’s most problematic is it is thought that students don’t fully know the impact of their decisions at high-school age.

Eraka Bath, a forensic child psychiatrist at UCLA said, “The area of the brain we use to make decisions and distinguish right from wrong, the prefrontal cortex, isn’t fully formed until around the age of 23.”

Scientifically, the harsh punishments attributed to students at such a young age are unjustified and unfair.

Secondly, we have to look at who will most commonly be effected by this law. Inner city schools are at an inherent disadvantage in a myriad of ways. From funding, to caliber of teacher, to the maturity of issues administrators and students have to deal with. And the new law adds one more disadvantage. The public sentiment is that inner city schools are the blemishes upon America’s public education record, and that is especially true considering that 35 percent of males in inner city schools are suspended at least once with the majority of the disciplinary infractions being fighting. Disciplinary action is heavily relied on in inner city schools which means this new Missouri law will only make the harm done to these kids being suspended permanent.

Finally, there is always the issue of race. Is this new law inadvertently targeting a specific race? The funny thing when it comes to that question is that statistics already shows disciplinary action is targeting a specific race.

According to 2015-2016 Federal data on “the discipline gap”, Missouri is home to the largest ethnic gap in school suspensions suspending 15 percent more of its African-American students than white students.

This new Missouri law will proliferate the punishment for fighting and the status quo is demonstrating the disproportionate impact of suspensions on African-American students. Regardless of why the statistic is what it is, the bottom line is we would be fools to advocate for a law that could hand a felony to high school students for a school fight particularly in the case of disproportionate impacts.

Nevertheless, schools are not always forced to report fighting incidents to law enforcement, which means not each and every fight would be felony worthy. It depends on the severity of the fight. But harassment is an infraction that schools must report to law enforcement according to state law. Which, according to the law, means if a victim becomes “emotionally distressed” the agitator could be up for a felony.

Multiple legal experts have issued statements saying that this law “will not criminalize student behavior” and people are “blowing this out of proportion.” But, in any case, we can’t stand for a law that potentially scars a child for the remainder of his or her life. There are a host of ulterior questions that rise with the discussion of this new law. Implications like the school to prison pipeline, burdening inner city schools, and race must be answered before legislators can possibly decide on a fair and just way to set standards that decrease school violence.