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Disciplinary violence against children is banned by law in Finland. According to the Finnish Criminal Code, acts of disciplinary violence are judged as assault. However, previous research has shown that authorities often find it difficult to identify cases of disciplinary violence and to intervene in them. The objective of this article is to examine the decision-making process in child welfare in suspected cases of disciplinary violence. The reasoning and arguments of social workers on which they based their decisions were analysed. Also, the measures taken were analysed, specifically whether a request for criminal investigation had been made to the police. The analysis was based on child welfare documents of one Finnish municipality from the year 2011. It was found that the decision-making process of social workers followed three pathways, resulting in two-thirds of the cases not leading to a request for criminal investigation to the police. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disciplinary violence is a type of a crime that still is not always perceived as a crime and perceptions of the severity and 'educational' nature of the acts still may affect authority decision making. This is not indifferent as pre-trial investigation carried out by the police has a crucial impact on how suspicions of crime proceed in the criminal process, especially when it comes to suspicions of violence against children. During pre-trial investigation, the police affect what kind of a case is being 'constructed' as a crime and, thus, affect what we perceive as a crime. This process of 'defining' what constitutes a crime is very meaningful especially when considering crimes like disciplinary violence that have not traditionally been considered as forbidden. Based on Finnish reports of crime to the police and pre-trial investigation documents from the year 2011, this research examines, first, what kind of typical suspicions of disciplinary violence come to the attention of the police and, second, how these suspicions have proceeded. The analysis shows that a typical suspicion of disciplinary violence is reported to the police by a social worker or the other parent, and that slightly less than two-thirds of the cases had been sent to a prosecutor. However, from the point of view of due process and equal treatment of children, the analysis yields alarming findings in the sense of very diverse policies of police departments and individual investigators in dealing with suspicions of disciplinary violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]