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Abstract

In the context of home, violence remains more accepted when committed against children than adults. Normalisation of parental violence has been documented in attitudinal surveys, professional practices, and legal regulation. For example, in many countries violent disciplining of children is the only legal form of interpersonal violence. This study explores the societal invisibility and normalisation of parental violence as a crime by analysing legislation and control policies regulating the division of labour and involvement between social welfare and criminal justice authorities. An empirical case study from Finland, where all forms of parental violence were legally prohibited in 1983, is used to elucidate the divergence between (criminal) law and control policies. The analysis demonstrates how normalisation operates at the policy-level where, within the same system of control that criminalised these acts, structural hindrances are built to prevent criminal justice interventions.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been published in Social & Legal Studies (SAGE), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/09646639211020820 . This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Publisher Keywords:	Child protection, criminalisation, legislation, parental violence, physical punishment, policy analysis, violence against children, violent disciplining
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology K Law
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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