Evaluating the Success of Sweden's Corporal Punishment Ban

• NCJ Number: 178385
• Journal: Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 23 Issue: 5 Dated: May 1999 Pages: 435-448
• Author(s): Joan E. Durrant
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 14 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In 1979 Sweden became the first nation to explicitly prohibit all forms of corporal punishment of children by all caretakers; this study examined relevant trends over recent decades to determine the degree to which the goals of this policy have been met.

Abstract

The goals of the policy were to alter public attitudes toward corporal punishment, increase the early identification of children at risk for abuse, and promote earlier and more supportive intervention for families. Interviews were conducted in Sweden with strategic officials to gain an understanding of the history and implementation of the corporal punishment ban. To permit examination of trends in the variables of interest, primary data were collected from Statistics Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare, and the National Crime Prevention Council. Interviews were also conducted with several Swedish experts to obtain background information on sociocultural shifts, legislative reforms, and criminal procedures that contextualized trends found in the data. Overall trends across time were examined regarding the following variables: public attitudes toward corporal punishment, reporting of assaults against children, characteristics of suspects in cases of reported assaults against children, estimates of child maltreatment rates, the prosecution of reported assaults against children, and measures taken by the social authorities. A line of best fit was generated for each of these variables; one-tailed Cox and Stuart tests for trends were conducted to determine whether their slopes were statistically significant. The trend analysis shows that public support for corporal punishment has declined, identification of children at risk has increased, child abuse mortality is rare, prosecution rates have remained steady, and social service intervention has become increasingly supportive and preventive. Although no direct causal relationships between the passage of the corporal punishment ban and the reported trends can be drawn, it is clear that the original goals of the Swedish corporal punishment ban have been met. 1 table and 74 references