How to End Family Policing - by Erin Miles Cloud & Erica R Meiners & Shannon Perez-Darby & C Hope Tolliver (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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

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, alternatives to family policing, and definitions of key concepts, this book is an urgent call to build flourishing communities.

About the Author

Erin Miles Cloud is a mama, civil rights attorney, cofounder of Movement for Family Power, and a former family defense public defender.

Erica R. Meiners is a writer, organizer, and educator in Chicago. They are the coauthor of Abolition. Feminism. Now. and The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm and Ending State Violence.

Shannon Perez-Darby is a queer, mixed-race Latina, founding member of the Accountable Communities Consortium, and a core member of the Mandatory Reporting Is Not Neutral project.

C. Hope Tolliver is a Black poet, abolitionist, parent, and Chicago native who has been organizing for more than two decades.