News, In 30 years without spanking, are Swedish children better behaved? (legal, punishment)

[JD59]

Stockholm – When celebrating the 30th anniversary of the world's first national ban on corporal punishment of children last month, Sweden's social affairs minister, Göran Hägglund, claimed a dramatic success over something many Swedes now consider a scourge.

"Colleagues from other countries often ask how we manage to raise children here without hitting them, but it works," he said. "Many countries have followed our model but we still have a way to go."

In 30 years without spanking, are Swedish children better behaved? - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091005/wl_csm/osmack - broken link)

[wyoquilter]

Originally Posted by John1960

Stockholm – When celebrating the 30th anniversary of the world's first national ban on corporal punishment of children last month, Sweden's social affairs minister, Göran Hägglund, claimed a dramatic success over something many Swedes now consider a scourge.

"Colleagues from other countries often ask how we manage to raise children here without hitting them, but it works," he said. "Many countries have followed our model but we still have a way to go."

In 30 years without spanking, are Swedish children better behaved? - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20091005/wl_csm/osmack - broken link)

I found this part to be very fascinating.

Quote:
Mali Nilsson, at the international charity Save the Children, denies the ban has increased crime. She cites official figures from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention indicating that youth crime has decreased in Sweden since the mid-1990s and violent crime has remained static.

What I find interesting about it is the USA has seen the same violent crimes by juveniles decrease in and around the same time period.

Here is but one website that shows this:

frontline: juvenile justice: stats: basic statistics

Here is another:
Statistics As It Relates To Juvenile Crime

The below site is a good read. It shows that most countries saw an increase in juvenile violent crimes in and around the same time period and saw a decrease in juvenile violent crimes in and around the same time period. Some of these countries are part of the ban against spanking children and others are not. So basically it shows that whether there is spanking or not juvenile crimes are going to happen. As to whether the ban against spanking children has really had a big impact on decreasing juvenile crimes is still yet to be determine same with showing spanking has had an impact.

http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest3e.pdf