Children, Corporal Punishment & the Overton Window

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 6: Youth Justice in Historical Criminology

Abstract

This paper will consider the importance of the Overton Window in the move away from corporal punishment in the UK from the mid-c19th to the present. While change will be identified, this paper will explore corporal punishment with reference to enduring continuities in four different contexts: judicial, confinement, educational, and the private sphere of the home. With respect to historical time, the contradictions, contestation and ambivalence in attitudes to the physical chastisement of children will be explored. The Overton Window is a political science concept that represents the range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept. It claims to dictate what is politically acceptable and therefore possible at a given moment, with the politically feasible shifting over time. This paper will consider whether changes in the legality and practice of corporal punishment was led from above or below. This research has asked whether corporal punishment was within the Overton Window when it was abolished or reduced within these contexts under study. This has been achieved by triangulating primary source material from the Home Office, parliamentary debates, legislation and newspapers. This has allowed an understanding of what influenced the stagnation and/or change including; law and policy change, reviews and committees, cultural attitudes, social institutions, significant events, media, global practice comparisons, and key actors.

Author

• Emma Deborah Watkins, University of Birmingham