Dave Crampton: Force doesn’t equal abuse

John Bowis, executive director of Save the Children Fund, has not really "set the record straight on the smacking debate". Commenting on his support of Green MP Sue Bradford's Private Member's bill repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act, Mr Bowis and Ms Bradford not only want the removal of the reasonable force provision, rather he wants all forms of smacking outlawed.

Mr Bowis correctly states force is assault, but incorrectly believes all force is abuse. Therefore he considers smacking, even with reasonable force, to be abuse.

As the purpose of Ms Bradford's bill is to "stop force" - meaning smacking - and classes all smacking as assault, it is not irresponsible or misleading to refer to her bill as banning the smacking of children, as Mr Bowis has claimed. Take away the provision of reasonable force, you are left with assault. Result: smacking will be against the law.

Yet Mr Bowis does not consider those who administer a small smack should be charged with assault, as he hopes police will turn a blind eye to it. In other words, he is quite happy for the majority of parents to break a law he is advocating for.

That is a strange position to take; as such a law will not mean what it says. What Mr Bowis would love to do is get rid of child abuse - as do we all - but he also wants the state to tell us how to run our families.

Mr Bowis is also incorrect when he says that no one, apart from parents, has the legal right to hit another person. Section 60 of the Crimes Act permits the master or officer of a ship of the pilot of a plane to use reasonable force for the purpose of maintaining order in the ship or aircraft.

Several countries have changed the law to ban smacking. Those who advocate for a smacking ban often quote Sweden as a role model. Smacking was banned in Sweden in July 1979. A primary aim of the ban was to decrease rates of child abuse and to promote supportive approaches for parents rather than coercive state intervention. Since the law change, child abuse and criminal assaults of minors have increased six-fold. Changing the law won't significantly reduce child abuse.

Mr Bowis noted that many countries have banned smacking, child abuse fatalities haven't dramatically increased, and that few parents think that smacking is acceptable.

A report on a Swedish survey by the University of Manitoba in Canada noted that it was not a smacking ban that made smacking unacceptable. After a public education campaign, public support of corporal punishment in Sweden dropped from 35 per cent in 1971 to 26 per cent just after smacking was outlawed, indicating most of the drop was before the ban.

In New Zealand, approval of smacking is around 80 per cent. The report, A Generation without Smacking, published by Save the Children, found that the actual use of physical punishment dropped very little, but child abuse cases increased dramatically. Furthermore, the law has resulted in many parents being harassed by the police and social authorities, prosecuted, sentenced and criminalised, because they smacked their children for bad behaviour. It could happen here, too.

Changing attitudes, rather than repealing Section 59 of the Crimes Act, will be more likely to address child abuse.

What is needed is reasoned debate on what constitutes reasonable force, or what constitutes assault in terms of physical discipline. Should reasonable force provisions be removed, we should legally be permitting some level of smacking and discussing what constitutes abuse in terms of physical discipline rather than branding it as unlawful assault.

Although removing reasonable force will prevent child abusers using this defence in court, banning smacking is not the answer to our unacceptable level of child abuse.

There is no evidence that the overall situation has improved for children in countries that have adopted smacking bans. Banning smacking will not change attitudes in society to the extent claimed by proponents of the bill. It is an easy option put forward by a minority of organisations who want to believe that all smacking is abuse.

* Dave Crampton is a Wellington writer and blogs at the website below. His last article for the Herald was on the debate surrounding the Prostitution Reform Act.