Reviews

The Gazette (Maryland Community Newspapers)

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Book promotes teaching law in schools (Thursday, Jan. 4, 2007)

In his new book, ‘‘Ten List for School Safety,” Prince George’s County police officer Noah Waters argues that teaching the law to students throughout their education is crucial to reducing violent behavior. Most of us never learn the law growing up, he said. Instead, we learn how to behave from the actions of people around us, and those who grow up in an environment of violence learn to think that violent behavior is justifiable. ‘‘[The book] suggests teaching the law from pre-K through 12th grade,” said Waters, ‘‘not once, but over and over again. [The law is] really not taught in school. People just pick it up. But there shouldn’t be a mystique to the law.” The book offers a series of lesson plans for teaching the subject, including definitions of basic legal concepts—such as what constitutes assault and theft—and role-playing games that get students to think about the consequences of breaking the law by putting themselves in the place of the victim. Waters, who lives in Suitland, said he hopes that police departments throughout the country will pick up on the lesson of his book and start programs.
Sgt. Michele Carter, who works with Waters in District 4, said she thought that the book had great value as a teaching tool. ‘‘I think the concept is outside the box,” she said. ‘‘I’ve never seen someone present that concept before...I think that the idea of bringing this concept [to schools] can have results not only in schools, but outside in the community.” Waters’ conviction in the need for the book comes in part from the fact that it is based on his own experience and observations. The book elaborates on a criminology master’s thesis he completed at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, while he was working as a student resource officer at Pocomoke High School. ‘‘I noticed that many kids involved in fights really didn’t know what the law was,” he said. ‘‘They thought that if someone pushed them, they could beat the crap out of them without getting arrested.” But after speaking to the students about the legal consequences of fighting, he noticed that the number of fights at the school declined sharply.

And Waters has seen in the drug dealers and murderers he has collared in Prince George’s County the effects that ignorance of the law can have on attitudes toward crime. ‘‘The people who commit these crimes feel justified, because they have no inkling of what the law is,” he said. ‘‘When you talk to people who do homicides, they think [the victim] had it coming. It’s amazing.” Waters is now juggling his duties as a police officer with classes for a doctorate in homeland security. He may be moving in a different direction, but Carter said that his dedication to teaching the law still shows through in his police work, in the way he deals with criminals.

‘‘In his encounters with some of these subjects, he does communicate with them in a way that tries to make them understand the repercussions to their actions,” she said. 

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