State Rep. Pete Lee of Colorado Springs thinks kids can be fixed by accepting the damage they’ve done by the wrongs they’ve perpetuated – and that includes texting naked pictures, which the kids call sexting.

Lee has been a champion of restorative justice – juveniles making amends and learning a lesson – over jail time and rap sheets. Now he hopes to extend that philosophy to laws on teen sexting.

Colorado leaders have been under pressure to find a solution since the state became a symbol of the national problem in 2015. A sexting scandal at Cañon City involved 106 high school and middle school students and 351 confiscated images. Nearly all of them were believed to be traded consensually and only a few photos included the student’s face.

Sometimes bad ideas can run through a school like a wildfire. At my school it was rainbow suspenders and Peter Frampton. Electronics have raised the stakes on bad choices.

Lee called it a “Pokemon-like game” of chasing racy photos in Cañon City schools, which, coincidentally, is home to many of the state’s prisons, a place you might expect kids to be more aware of consequences. And teens deserve to be punished for such hurtful and scarring offenses, Lee contends.

But when it’s 106 children, can they all be bad? They’re all certainly stupid.

The current law is so punitive and damaging for the underlying offense of being a stupid teenager that prosecutors said it wasn’t an option in Cañon City. The letter of the law would have prescribed a class 3 felony that’s attached to three years in jail and possibly $100,000 in fines.

Tuesday afternoon Lee’s House Bill 1302 will be heard by the Judiciary Committee he chairs. His bill follows on the agenda another legislative remedy to teen sexting, House Bill 1064, sponsored by Rep. Yeulin Willett of Grand Junction to create a class 2 misdemeanor charge of “misuse of electronic images by a juvenile.” It would carry a maximum sentence of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Willett tried a similar bill last year, but it died in committee when Democrats aligned against it.

Lee’s bill about sharing nude photos of children will test the boundaries of his legal and legislative philosophy of restorative justice. Let me say that again: sharing nude photos of children.

Atonement to the victim for wrongs is as old as civilization, the accepting responsibility and making it right again. Along the progression of human development, however, kings and laws intervened.

But decades ago when he was a corporate lawyer for a sugar company, Lee got involved with a program that allowed juveniles to work off their fines. He once went undercover to drive a dump truck to see if the program was really changing kids, and that experience changed him. He heard one bragging about getting a 10-cent raise for doing a good job. Lee believes when a kid takes responsibility he cultivates a sense of honor that bears more fruit.

Lee also is a former criminal defense lawyer. A system of juvenile punishment that’s all stick and no carrot does more harm than good to young people, helping turn kids into crooks instead of an avenue to learn self-respect and respect for others.

“We want to use these acts to educate these kids,” he said of sexters, “not to bring the power of the criminal justice system down on them, but give them an opportunity to grow by engaging in the restorative justice process.”

The bill creates a sexting-prevention curriculum for school districts to use.

Supporters include George Welsh, the superintendent of Cañon City Schools, and One Colorado, the state’s largest advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.

Laura “Pinky” Reinsch, One Colorado’s political director, said LGBTQ students are more likely to experience humiliation, dating violence and bullying.

Lee’s bill “protects teen victims whose privacy has been violated while also creating levels of accountability, including educational and restorative practices, for teens who engage in abusive sexting behaviors,” she said.

Reinsch thinks the other bill that lowers the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor treats consensual sexting and malicious sexting as the same thing, even making it possible to prosecute victims.

“In other words, regardless of the circumstances, it treats every young person engaging in this behavior – even they did not consent to it – as a criminal under Colorado law,” Reinsch said.

Lawmakers agree that stupid kids shouldn’t be punished as child pornographers, but the question is whether they should be charged with anything at all. Your answer might depend on whether your child is the victim or perpetrator.

But it’s been two years since Cañon City, and it is statehouse gridlock over the right thing to do that gives kids a felony or nothing at all.