Panel OKs Graffiti-Vandal Paddling Bill

Flexing newfound conservative muscle, Assembly Republicans pushed out of a key committee a controversial measure that would allow the paddling of juvenile graffiti vandals, brushing aside criticism from Democratic lawmakers who lambasted it as cruel punishment.

Voting along party lines, the Assembly Public Safety Committee by a 5-4 margin approved a bill by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) that would allow a judge to order a parent or bailiff to whack children up to 10 times with a half-inch-thick wooden paddle.

“I’m just giving a tool to the judge, an appropriate punishment for a child he feels needs a little rod,” Conroy said. “Spare the rod, lose the child is a proverb we’ve lived by for years and years. . . . [The judge] can threaten the little monster if he so desires.”

The measure (AB 7) drew national attention when Conroy first introduced it in 1994, but it failed to escape a Democrat-controlled fiscal committee and died there.

With Republicans now firmly in control of the lower house, Conroy’s bill is expected to reach the Assembly floor for a vote--after a stop in the Appropriations Committee--in the next few months. Tuesday’s debate between Democrats and Republicans vividly illustrated the widening ideological gulf separating the combatants in the sharply divided Assembly.

Conroy and Republicans on the Public Safety Committee unabashedly heralded the measure as the sort of get-tough proposal needed to stem the flood of graffiti in California, which costs the state $300 million annually in cleanup costs.

“As a parent, I have found that sometimes corporal punishment is necessary,” said Assemblyman James E. Rogan, a Glendale Republican and former judge who has seen plenty of juvenile offenders. “And I think the majority of people in this country agree.”

But his Democratic opponents heartily disagreed, and they were joined by a plethora of child welfare advocates, the California Teachers Assn., social workers and legal experts who also oppose the bill.

Pointing to studies suggesting that corporal punishment serves only to breed anger and resentment among wayward children, they labeled Conroy’s idea a throwback to a more inhumane age and an intolerable intrusion into matters best left up to parents.

“I really question how you can come to the conclusion that paddling would have any social value whatsoever,” Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park) said.

Although a legal opinion Conroy got from the state attorney general’s office suggests that paddling would be found constitutional, opponents argued that such a law would fall if tested by the courts and invariably would prompt damage claims by outraged parents.

Hefting a beefy paddle, Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) argued that the wooden plank was “somewhere between a paddle and a bat” and could cause “great harm” in the wrong hands. “We actually could put governmental officials in a position of being sued for causing the kind of harm one could cause if struck with this kind of stick.”

Rogan, however, suggested that the bill’s opponents were attempting “to somehow color this bill” as sinister and harmful because of ideological differences. He argued that many of the studies showing problems associated with spankings are tainted by biases against corporal punishment on the part of the researchers. And he said parents who paddle their children are doing it “out of love, not hate.”