The campaign to make emotional neglect a criminal offence in
England seems to be being driven forward without much attention to either the
priority or the logicality of the proposed changes.
An article about this in the Independent seems to me to put mostly only one-side of the
argument.
We are told that a majority of police officers want a change
in the law, but we are not told what social workers, child psychiatrists and
psychologists, paediatricians and other professionals think.
Nor are we told that the civil
law in England treats emotional abuse and neglect in just the same way as other
type of abuse. There are no legal obstacles to intervening in these cases and
bringing matters before the Family Courts.
The only effect of the proposed change to the law would be
to allow people who emotionally neglect their children to be arrested and tried
in the criminal courts, even imprisoned. In my experience most people who
emotionally neglect their children are not rational and calculating; rather
they are drug or alcohol dependent or mentally ill. The priority should be to
get such people adequate treatment, not put them in prison.
Punishing failing parents seldom does much for their abused
and neglected children. In most cases children want the abuse and neglect to
stop, not to see their parents behind bars.
And I believe that if the law were changed it would not be
long before somebody would be tried and convicted who clearly is not bad but
sad. That would then bring the law and child protection into disrepute.
I am surprised by how much support seems to be given to a
proposed change in legislation that is supported by so little evidence. Messing
about with this issue is a distraction that is likely to result in bad law.
