Three 12-year-old girls have been charged with first-degree felonies in the latest example of America s insane rush to criminalize children:Three seventh-graders at Deltona Middle School are facing criminal charges after allegedly putting crushed red pepper flakes in their teacher s can of Mountain Dew, a Volusia County sheriff s spokesman said.The three 12-year-old girls were arrested are being held at the Volusia Regional Juvenile Detention Center.Two face charges of poisoning food or water and tampering with consumer products. The third faces charges of tampering with consumer products and being a principal to poisoning food or water.I m not defending the actions of these three students but let s get a little perspective here: It was red pepper. You know, the stuff you put on your pizza to give it a little (emphasis on  little ) zing? Two weeks of detention, a week of suspension, one month of community service or even the drastic step of expulsion would have been a more reasonable course of action. Instead, they got this not-at-all-extreme response:One Florida law the girls are facing charges under makes it illegal to add  poison, bacterium, radioactive material, virus, or chemical compound  to food or drinks, intending to kill or injure another person. It is a first-degree felony. The students also face a first-degree felony charge under Florida s Anti-Tampering Act,which prohibits changing consumer products  with reckless disregard  for another person s health and safety.Again, we re talking about RED PEPPER which, last I looked, was not capable of killing or injuring a person unless ingested by the pound (and maybe not even then).This growing trend of criminalizing children for behaving like children stems from our  War on Everything  mentality. We used to look at problem children and think  How can I help this kid grow into a productive adult?  Now, we look at these same kids and think,  Putting them in prison will be better for society.  That s not just cruel, it s certifiably insane. But we re still doing it. We ve flooded our schools with cops and cameras and metal detectors and random locker searches   all in the name of  safety. At best, we re conditioning children to accept a police state in which those in authority can violate their civil rights without consequence. At worst, we re conditioning them to think of themselves as criminals. This is especially true of the minority students that bear the brunt of  zero tolerance  policies and are the primary  beneficiaries  of the School-to-Prison pipeline. Funny how that worked out, right?How s that old saying go?  Get em while they re young and you ll have a customer for life?  It s nauseating that we ve applied that to mass incarceration. Murika.Featured image via google plus 