How to End the Family Policing System

From leading abolitionist organizers, a much-needed intervention arguing that the systems that purport to protect children make them—and our communities—less safe.

Based on decades of shared organizing, study, and lived experience, the contributors to How to End Family Policing argue that the child welfare system cannot build genuine safety. Rather than the misleading language of “child welfare” and “child protective services,” scholars and activists use the term “family policing” to name the fact that these institutions and practices are neither neutral nor benign. Black, Indigenous, and Latinx parents do not mistreat their children at higher rates than white parents. Yet 53 percent of all Black children in the United States will experience a child protective services investigation before the age of eighteen.

Offering first-person testimony and laying out visions for alternatives to family policing, this book is an urgent call to build flourishing communities.

With contributions from Corey B. Best, Annie Chambers, Noran Elzarka, Brianna Harvey, Shira Hassan, Shawn Koyano, jaboa lake, Elizabeth Ling, Leah Plasse, Margaret Prescod, zara raven, Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera, Dorothy Roberts, Arneta Roger, Lisa Sangoi, jasmine Sankofa, Kylee Sunderlin, Jasmine Wali, Amanda Wallace, Eleni Zimiles, and the editors.