Is the term "slap on the wrist" as a punishment an expression or does it actually mean getting slapped on the wrist?
I've seen programs where it was mentioned as a punishment for people who did unlawful things, and usually it was the only punishment (though there's a Rocky and Bullwinkle episode where Boris and Natasha end up getting arrested and slaps on the writst, can't remember if they got anything else for their actions... And this was the only time in fiction that I saw anyone actually getting slapped on the wrist, as opposed to it just being mentioned).
But then I saw an episode of American Dad where Stan and the kids get in trouble for vandalizing, the judge tells them he'll give them slaps on the wrists before mentioning their punishments (which are the kids getting 20 hours of community service and Stan getting three months in jail), which leads me to believe that a "slap on the wrist" is a punishment that's not too bad.
But then I decided to look it up online, which lists definitions of what I thought. So I can't quite tell if it's literal or an expression.