Dear all
Sweden was, as you know, the first country to ban corporal punishment in 1979. The ban can be found in the Swedish Parental Code, where there is no paragraph at all about punishment of parents. On the contrary the text is concentrated on parents´ responsibilities to raise children in a non-punishing and non-humiliating manner.
Normally parents will be reported to social services for help and support in case they are not able to live up to their duties.
In case where parents have abused their children in a more severe manner, they will be reported to the police and in a few cases it will go further to prosecution according to the Penal Code. Maltreatment is supposed to be handled in the same way independently of if you are an adult or a child. This was not always the case during the first decades after the ban, but is so today. Maltreatment of children are today even looked upon as more severe than maltreatment of adults, as children normally are dependent of adult caretakers and relatively defenceless.
In case you are specifically interested in the Swedish experiences I wrote a chapter about this published last year:
Staffan Janson. The development of social and legal aspects of corporal punishment - a Swedish paediatrician´s commentary. Chapter 13 in Saunders, Leviner, Naylor. Corporal punishment of children, comparative legal and social developments towards prohibition and beyond. Brill-Nijhoff, Leiden/Boston 2019.
Best regards
Staffan Janson
Paediatrican
Prof.em. Karlstad University
Affiliated to Uppsala University
Sweden
+46 72 5357759
CHIFA profile: Staffan Janson is a child health professional, based in Sweden. staffan.janson AT kau.se
