Corporal punishment of children

This article covers the injustice of corporal punishment of children.

Background
Corporal punishment is physical punishment that is used to discipline children typically for misbehavior. It is used in schools by school personnel as well as by parents/guardians in the home. Sometimes, the corporal punishment is extremely viciously violent, resulting in serious physical injury requiring hospitalization; this is especially true when corporal punishment is used in the school setting by people other than the parents/guardians.

In the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Ingraham v. Wright that corporal punishment is legal and does not violate any due process or constitutional rights. Since then, in the numerous U.S. states in which corporal punishment is legal in schools, there have been virtually no legal remedies for corporal punishment regardless of the amount of physical injury or violence that occurs.

Arguments in favor of regarding as an injustice
Corporal punishment of children is extremely abusive, and child abuse is not something that society should tolerate. Inflicting serious injury on children is a violation of their basic human rights. Most of society believes that animals should be treated humanely, so the same should go for human beings. The U.S. Supreme Court was wrong to find that corporal punishment of children is not a violation of their civil rights because, if the violent corporal punishments that are used on children were used on prisoners in the U.S., it would be considered a violation of the prisoners' civil rights, so not holding it to be a violation of childrens' civil rights is a double standard. At the very least, there needs to be a legal limit on the amount of force that can be used in a punishment of a child; if the level of force would cause physical injury and hospitalization then it has crossed the line into abuse.

Having different standards in different U.S. states on an issue as serious as violence against children is wrongful and creates an inconsistent patchwork; there should be a federal law preventing violent punishments against children.

The use of corporal punishment is also often misused in which the punishment does not fit the "crime". For example, students often get spanked and abused for innocuous mistakes such as getting answers wrong in class or earning a low exam score.

Using violence against children teaches violence. In spite of some of the praise that former victims of corporal punishment have professed for it, there are many more people who become broken and dysfunctional and have lifelong emotional trauma (such as posttraumatic stress disorder) from over-violent corporal punishments in their childhoods.

Arguments against regarding as an justice
Using force to discipline children is very often necessary to correct behavior. Many children do not respond properly to non-physical discipline, and they would be permitted to get out-of-control without corporal punishment. In jurisdictions that allow corporal punishment, misbehavior is better-controlled.