Paddling Measure Apparently Headed for Assembly Floor

A bill by an Orange County lawmaker that would allow the paddling of juvenile graffiti vandals appeared headed for victory late Wednesday in a key Assembly committee.

Although the Appropriations Committee had yet to conduct a final vote on the measure by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), he confidently predicted that he had the votes, setting up what promises to be a raucous partisan debate on the Assembly floor next week.

A companion bill by Conroy also headed for the floor would repeal the state’s decade-old ban on corporal punishment in public schools.

The two issues have perhaps more than any other in the Capitol this year demonstrated the deep division between Republicans and Democrats. And once again, Republicans applauded Conroy’s legislation while Democrats vilified it.

Conroy suggested that the paddling measure is needed to curb growing problems with graffiti in California. The state spends more than $300 million annually in cleanup costs.

“For every kid you turn off to graffiti, there’s that much less to clean up,” Conroy told the committee. “I want to give the judge something he can use to intimidate the kid.”

But the bill’s opponents countered that such violent punishment would backfire, breeding resentment among teenagers that might cause further proliferation of graffiti. They also argued that it would boost costs to the state on a variety of fronts--everything from increased health-care costs to treat injured children to the purchase price for special restraints that might be needed to hold some children for the paddling.

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

“There’s going to be a liability risk every time there is a flogging,” said Steve Barrow, policy director for the Children’s Advocacy Institute.

Democrats also argued that Conroy’s bill would not make a dent in the graffiti problem because many vandals are never caught and police do not expend much time pursuing them. And among gang members, critics said, a paddling before a judge might ultimately become a rite of passage.

“If they get paddled, it seems to me, it only increases their esteem in that group,” argued Assemblywoman Valerie Brown (D-Sonoma). She also suggested that most taggers are already beyond reach. “When I go into my local juvenile institution, there’s not one kid I think will be changed by paddling,” she said.

Democrats also said a more appropriate approach for tackling the graffiti problem would be to bolster multifaceted programs, which generally involve the cleanup of damaged property, and try to steer repeat graffiti vandals toward a more productive course.