In One Arizona County, Child Protective Services Will Eventually Investigate Two-Thirds of Black Children
A staggeringly high number of families are subject to child abuse and neglect investigations in Maricopa County, Arizona.
In Maricopa County, Arizona, 63 percent of black children are investigated by the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) by the time they turn 18, according to a joint report published this month by ProPublica and NBC News. For white children, the number is only 33 percent.
One black mother was investigated by the Arizona DCS after she sought medical care when her daughter fell off a couch. Another woman had her children taken for over a year after she left them home alone for 20 minutes. Another was investigated after facing an unfounded accusation that she left her autistic child in the car while she went inside a store.
Of the dozens of parents ProPublica and NBC News interviewed, “almost all described a system so omnipresent among Black families that it has created a kind of community-wide dread… Many expressed disbelief that it was so easy for the state government to enter their family realm and potentially remove their kids from them.”…..
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