[quote]However, once that line is crossed is it not also important to try to make it so crossing the line can have the most minimal amount of damage possible?
Or if we can't do that, at least learn how to react once over the line so if you're out their again it's not even worse for you the second time?[/quote]

No. If balance and control and good-natured teaching and discipline are insufficient to maintain order, then the sum of human accomplishment throughout history has failed to reach this individual. There can be no mercy in this situation. You can't 'just shoot him a little.' [i]When force is required it cannot be tempered, or it will fail.[/i] Cavemen and clubs. And if the offender comes out the other side more-or-less intact, then you can try to teach him again.

To withhold a righteous fury is not mercy. By depriving the criminal of the consequences of his actions, you have doomed him to repeat his miscreant ways. 

....and slowly, I'm gathering that this is actually a thread about high school again, in which case you should pretty much ignore all this as 'real world shit,' and return to classroom discussion. The learning process is part of the equation here, one I'm taking as a given; if the subject is 'while you're still in school,' then that process isn't complete yet. I obviously don't think we should be smashing 9th graders' faces with rocks when they sneak out of detention.