A child wanders off during a parent's moment of inattention, and suddenly the girl is bundled off to foster care. Not an unusual occurence in New York City: An investigation finds that its child-services agency often takes children from struggling minority mothers with scant evidence, on the ground that a child's safety is at risk. The practice has given rise to a nickname for the criminalization of parenting choices: Jane Crow.
From the New York Times:
Lawyers for parents say the spikes in child removals tend to occur after high-profile failures in the system, and this could well describe the pattern now: In December, the agency administrator resigned after two children who were being monitored by the agency were beaten to death in separate incidents. ...
Vivek Sankaran, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, has examined short-term placements of children in foster care. He learned that in the 2013 federal fiscal year, 25,000 children nationwide were in foster care for 30 days or fewer, about 10 percent of the total removals.
“We've inflicted the most devastating remedy we have on these families, then we're basically saying, within a month, ‘Sorry, our mistake,'” he said. “And these families are left to deal with the consequences.”
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