Talk:Corporal punishment of minors in the United States

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Comment[edit]

I'm not sure that this article is necessary. There is already a subcategory on the school corporal punishment page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_corporal_punishment#United_States. The pages for spanking and others also already exist. Blaise170 (talk) 14:46, 18 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Delaware's "Ban" on spanking[edit]

The law that was passed in Delaware in 2012 caused a fire storm in the news media. The problem is that none of these journalists have any legal training and rarely seem to consult with qualified attorneys before spouting off on this issue. The result was a broadly misreported line of "Delware bans spanking." If one actually looks at the statutes, it becomes clear this is a whole lot of nothing.

The actual law is covered in Title 11 of the Delaware Code, which is "Crimes and Criminal Procedure." The new Senate Bill made a change to Chapter 5, Section 1100, which is a collection of definitions relating to crimes against children. There are two key lines in this law. First is paragraph (1)

(1)"Abuse" means causing any physical injury to a child through unjustified force as defined in § 468(1)(c) of this title, torture, negligent treatment, sexual abuse, exploitation, maltreatment, mistreatment or any means other than accident.
— http://delcode.delaware.gov/title11/c005/sc05/index.shtml

This definition is unchanged by the 2012 bill. However, the definition that was changed was for the highlighted phrase, to the following:

(5)"Physical injury" to a child shall mean any impairment of physical condition or pain.
— http://delcode.delaware.gov/title11/c005/sc05/index.shtml

This inclusion of the word "pain" creates the impression that any act that causes pain is abuse, and because spanking by its very nature is intended to inflict pain, then spanking = abuse. But this is actually ignoring something important in the first definition: "through unjustified force as defined in § 468(1)(c)" This means that it is only considered abuse if the pain was inflicted by means of a defined set of actions. What does § 468(1)(c) define those as?

c.The force shall not be justified if it includes, but is not limited to, any of the following: Throwing the child, kicking, burning, cutting, striking with a closed fist, interfering with breathing, use of or threatened use of a deadly weapon, prolonged deprivation of sustenance or medication, or doing any other act that is likely to cause or does cause physical injury, disfigurement, mental distress, unnecessary degradation or substantial risk of serious physical injury or death;
— http://delcode.delaware.gov/title11/c004/index.shtml#468

Note how none of these actions including striking with an open hand or with a non-deadly implement. Therefore, the law does not actually consider doing so to be abuse. This stands as yet another example of the news media hearing about a law and getting it completely wrong.Legitimus (talk) 13:54, 27 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'll change the map image to reflect this. Kranix (talk | contribs) 22:54, 16 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]