No causal link to smacking

Not sure if the BOP Times published this one:

It may surprise KH Salt (Bay Times, 30 December 2006) to learn that forty years ago I was in my teens and I can well remember that corporal punishment was commonplace both at home and at school. In my experience bullies remained bullies even after “six of the best”. The only lesson the cane taught was not to get caught.
K H Salt fails to show a causal link between the absence of corporal punishment and a perceived increase in “violence, corruption and immorality”. In fact he offers several possible alternative causes: the United Nations, atheism, a decline in the influence of British common law, departure from the Ten Commandments.
His argument would have some validity if he could show that those children who were never beaten were later responsible for the violence, corruption, etc., while those who were beaten became model citizens. A brief spell working with problem children some years ago taught me that, whatever these children needed, it was not another hiding.