Comparatively trivial, but a current story from Birmingham in the UK is that a girl took her mother's jewellery to school to show it to her friends. Quite rightly, the school confiscated the jewellery and put it in their safe.
Now they refuse to give it back to the parents unless they wait until the end of term or prosecute their own daughter for theft.
Of course, they couldn't possibly do anything else - rules are rules. Either the items belong to the girl, in which case the school claims justification in keeping them, or else they are stolen. "You can't have it both ways", they say.