Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Standard - The police can now search every home

This is unbelievable.

While the removal of s59 is not intended to stop child abuse, it has the ability to start reducing our shocking abuse rates which are amongst the highest in the world.

Complaints to the police on parents smacking their children have increased in the past two years since the law was enacted. With the rise in complaints, it now affords the police the chance to investigate the home lives of those who have complaints laid against them. Parents who run a good household have the least to fear as the police will generally see that the children are well looked after and they don’t fear their own parents as they don’t live under the threat of “getting a hiding”. Police see this, and determine the nature of the complaint is “not in the public interest to prosecute.”

Is it just me, or is that one of the most scary things you've read in a long time? The recent law change removed any defense that force used for correction was reasonable. That means that any parent who used force (or threat) for correction now has only the defense that they didn't do it.

If there is positive evidence that they did, then they are effectively railroaded through the courts. The writer above thinks that it's fantastic that police are called out to the homes of good parents, because then they can use their own personal biases to decide who to present to court.

They can then be convicted, even if what they did was reasonable.

That is such a bad thing legally, it isn't funny.

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