Violence Prevention Commission Recommends Total Ban on Corporal Punishment

A total ban on corporal punishment is among the recommendations of the National Violence Prevention Commission.

Prime Minister, the Most Hon. Andrew Holness, announced two of the recommendations while addressing sixth-form students and their teachers at Manchester High School in Mandeville, on January 12.

The National Violence Prevention Commission was mandated to conduct a continuing comprehensive review of all existing public and private violence-prevention programmes as well as the Government’s strategies.

Its purpose is to identify gaps in the prevention and intervention services and make recommendations with respect to appropriate programmes.

The Prime Minister revealed recently that he had received preliminary data from the Commission.

“So, the Government has put in place a Commission to study this whole business of violence. And there are some recommendations that will come. There are a few of them, for example a recommendation that has been about for a long time, but the Commission has studied it in detail and the recommendation is that there should be a total ban on corporal punishment,” Mr. Holness said.

“That is going to be a controversial one, but I think that the society is at the point now where it must confront itself on how it uses violence as a means of disciplining children, because that’s what corporal punishment is. It is a violation of the personhood of the child,” he added.

Corporal or physical punishment is defined by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which oversees the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light”.

According to the Committee, this mostly involves hitting (smacking, slapping, spanking) children with a hand or implement (whip, stick, belt, shoe, wooden spoon or similar), but it can also involve, for example, kicking, shaking or throwing children, scratching, pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions, burning, scalding or forced ingestion.

In 2017, the Prime Minister in his Budget debate announced that the Government would amend the Education Act to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in schools.

Meanwhile, Mr. Holness informed that another of the recommendations focuses on changing the law to empower the police to respond to and treat with persons who have displayed violent tendencies.

“When conflicts arise in communities, in families and someone goes to the police station and reports it, what is the police empowered to do? Police gives you a warning… . So the way in which we recognise and preemptively deal with persons who have displayed violent tendencies, we need to change our laws to empower our police to be able to act very quickly,” he said.

The Prime Minister cited examples in Trelawny and Clarendon where cases were brought to the attention of the police and subsequently ended in a murder.

Mr. Holness said the overall objective aims to improve and build peace in the country.

He urged Jamaicans to live good with each other, noting that the conversation of peace must be introduced from an early age.

“At the end of the day, no matter how many laws we change, no matter how many police we put on the street, it is going to be your personal decision. It’s going to be how you choose to react,” Mr. Holness said.

“So, I’m appealing to all of you here to become ambassadors for peace. You are the sixth formers; you are the leaders of discipline in the school. You are also academic leaders in the schools. You are role models in the schools. You can become the model of peace for those who look up to you,” he added.