NCCPR news and commentary round-up, week ending Oct. 1, 2024

● This just in: America’s foremost scholar on the intersection of racism and family policing (and a member of the NCCPR Board of Directors) Prof. Dorothy Roberts has received a MacArthur Fellowship -- the awards that are commonly known as “genius grants.”  

From the New York Times story: 

Another fellow, Dorothy Roberts, a legal scholar and public policy researcher focused on racial inequities in social services, said she appreciated receiving the fellowship after spending decades writing about topics — such as the prosecution of pregnant Black women for using drugs, which she argues is inherently unjust — that other scholars considered inappropriate. 

“I started this work in 1988,” said Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school and the author of books including “Shattered Bonds” and “Torn Apart,” both about institutional racism in the child welfare system. “To get this kind of recognition is very gratifying. Not only for me personally, but for all the people, especially Black women, who’ve been devalued in these systems.”

This story from The Imprint has a good summary of Prof. Roberts' work and a link to their interview with her for their podcast. 

● Sometimes one small detail from a government document tells a huge story – especially when a good reporter adds a little context.  Rolling Stone has published a superb deep dive that begins as an exploration of needless family destruction because a pregnant mother smoked pot, then expands into an in-depth look at the confusion of poverty with neglect.  It includes this paragraph: 

Some states practically name poverty in their child separation policies: If “family finances are insufficient to support unusual need[s],” child separation could be justified, Arizona’s DCF policy reads. (Using data from 2022, the Federal Reserve reported that 43 percent of parents — more than 14 million families — did not have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency expense.) 

● Among the he consequences of this kind of thinking in Arizona: tearing apart families at a rate far above the national average, so children are dumped into substandard placements.  Like that time a child with Type 1 diabetes, needlessly taken from a loving home, died in an Arizona group home.  What, you think you already saw that story? No. ABC15’s investigation concerns another child in another Arizona group home – including some harrowing police bodycam video. 

● One state moving in the right direction on these issues is New Jersey. In a move that would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, New Jersey Spotlight News reports that the state Attorney General is suing a chain of hospitals to stop them from performing clandestine drug tests on pregnant women and then reporting the results to the family police.  According to the story:

Patients were referred to state child welfare officials even when the positive test resulted from prescribed medication, over-the-counter drugs or a poppyseed bagel, according to the state’s lawsuit …

And if you’re wondering which neighborhoods these hospitals serve, it’s the ones you think. 

● And from 2023: A reminder from this blog that not all pot-smoking moms are treated horribly. Some even are celebrated.  

● From The Conversation: An exploration of another group that faces discrimination in the family policing system: the disabled. (And again a reminder: The U.S. Department of Justice reportedly is investigating whether such discrimination has gone high-tech in Pittsburgh.) 

● Harvard Law Today looks at the Medical-Legal Partnership forged by the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau’s Family Defense Practice and Boston Medical Center. 

There are several interesting new laws in California: 

● Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to stop county family police agencies from stealing foster youth’s Social Security survivor benefits.  But they will remain free to steal their disability benefits. (A bill that would have barred both was vetoed by Newsom last year.) 

● He also signed a bill concerning residential treatment, The Imprint reports the new law 

requires the state Department of Social Services to publicly report how often and why children have been physically restrained or sent to seclusion.

The law does not require the RTCs to stop doing any of it.  But their trade association says even reporting when it happens is unnecessary because, really, everything is just fine in California institutions already. 

● And Native News Online reports on a law strengthening protections for California’s Native American children. 

● But efforts to undermine the rights of Native children continue.  The Imprint reports there’s another challenge to the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, with opponents apparently trying to use a state court and a similar state law to worm their way back to the U.S. Supreme Court, even though that court upheld ICWA last year.  The challenge is taking place in Minnesota – the state with the worst record in America for separating Native American families. 

In more examples of how The Horror Stories Go in All Directions: 

● From KJRH-TV, Oklahoma:

“A literal nightmare,” Alexis Fridenberg called her childhood foster, and ultimately adoptive, home.  At four years old, Fridenberg said she was placed into a home of “career” foster parents.  “That is what they got out of it, the money,” she said. … 

Alexis said her adoptive brother, the parents’ biological son, Sammy Fridenberg, sexually assaulted her daily from age 7 to 18. He now faces multiple charges. Court documents show other relatives have come forward alleging abuse as well.

●VT Digger reports that 

In the past two years, two Florida residential facilities experienced outbreaks of violence that left multiple youths injured. Vermont’s human services agency continued to send teens there — even after the incidents. 

Yeah; that’s going to happen when in a state like progressive little Vermont, which keeps tearing apart families at the second highest rate in America – more than quadruple the national average. 

Two stories about death in Kansas: 

●The Kansas Beacon reports on two foster youth who died while being warehoused in state offices. 

●From the Topeka Capital-Journal:

 Police in a small town near Wichita have publicly identified the child whose decomposing body was found in a backyard after officers were called to a home for an unrelated matter earlier in September. 

Rose Hill police chief Taylor Parlier on Friday identified the girl as Kennedy Jean Schroer, who is believed to have been about 6 years old when she died. Kennedy was born July 14, 2014, and was adopted in November 2018. Police believe she died in late 2020. ...

Once again, none of this should be a surprise in a state that, while not as bad as Vermont, still has, for decades, overloaded its system by tearing apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation.