Baroness calls for end to smacking
5 Oct 06
Abolishing smacking could lower rates of reoffending, says Helena Kennedy QC
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has called for an end to the smacking of children.
Giving the inaugural Scottish Children’s Lecture on Monday in Edinburgh City Chambers, Baroness Kennedy argued that abolishing smacking in Scotland could lead to lower rates of violent offending and reduce violence, including bullying, between children.
Admitting that on occasion she had hit her own children and felt nothing but shame afterwards, she said that she did not believe there was such a thing as “a loving smack”, and had seen “too much of the bad stuff” in her work as a barrister, where parents justified their actions as being for the child’s good.
She said: “We want our children to grow up to be disciplined and to learn to handle their own angry feelings, and they do not learn that from being hit."
Anti violence campaign
Her views echo those of the charity CHILDREN 1ST, which has instituted the lecture and which has been campaigning for children to have the same freedom from assault as adults for more than 70 years. The charity is part of the UK-wide Children Are Unbeatable Alliance.
Baroness Kennedy said however, that while the hitting of minors should be outlawed, there was an accompanying need for “sensible prosecution procedures” to avoid proceedings arising from the “ridiculous” Cherie Blair incident – where the Prime Minister’s wife was reported to police for playfully tapping a young man’s hand in full view of the cameras.
During her lecture, Baroness Kennedy highlighted the fact that the UK scored abysmally low in a recent EU survey on child welfare, coming 26th – above only the ex-USSR Baltic states.
She also warned the audience not to fall into the trap of idealising childhood in the past, which had often involved extreme poverty and exploitation. Child abuse was now recognised as wrong and children were protected.
Despite there being no evidence to show that the sexual abuse of children was more prevalent today than it had been in the past, she said, modern society had taken risk aversion too far and was now “paying a huge price” for its hysteria about paedophiles.
Superior system
Baroness Kennedy also praised the Scottish children’s hearing system as “so superior” to the juvenile criminal justice system in England, but called for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 13 or 14 years.
She expressed her belief that children should be kept out of the criminal justice system for as long as possible, and denounced the “demonisation of working-class children” over the past few years by the media – around 70% of media stories involving youngsters are negative.
She criticised the giving of ASBOs to under-16s, and said that instead more resources should be given to social work to help young offenders and find out why they are offending.