This week's award for moral panic goes to....the opponents of the anti-smacking bill. Many of the bill's opponents give the distinct impression of not even having read it!
Apparently once this bill is made law, our jails will be overflowing with parents thrown into chokey for whacking their kids. As the Select Committee report notes, parents could also technically be prosecuted for kidnapping when they send kids to their bedroom, yet amazingly, this doesnt seem to happen! I cannot imagine the police prosecuting a parent for smacking their child on the backside. As it is, police use their discretion in deciding who to charge. The only concern in my mind is that police might use that discretion to prosecute people against whom they have a particular grudge. It is always concerning when police have wide powers of interpretation over the law, but it is worth remembering that this is possibly unavoidable in such a fraught area.
In any case, the Select Committe report includes a recommendation which would allow parents to use reasonable force in the "normal daily care" of a child. I would expect juries to use such a clause to acquit a parent who lightly smacked a child. Incidentally, the Select Committee also recommended an amendment which would clearly allow physical force used to protect the child, or another person (if the child is about to touch a hot surface, for instance).
Frankly, I think the current situation, in which parents can hit their kids with lumps of wood and other foreign objects, is despicable. Personally, I would rather that parents did not hit their kids. However, this may not always be realistic, and we do not want to see good parents in the dock because o a light smack. This bill is a pretty good compromise I think.
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Yet now the response after the Bill has come back from select committee is to change the Bill so no force can be used at all in correction.
And the Police Association have stated Police will be obliged to investigate all complaints made under the new law lest they are found not to have acted in a genuine case of abuse.
If the police have too much power its because Parliament gave it to them and made them unaccountable. Parliament is just starting to recognise that this might be happening (Louise Nicholas case and Bazley's inquiry, and making the PCA independent) so handing over more power to the police is not doing any good at all.
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