Interesting article. I don’t know much about the topic but I think states passing Free Range Children acts might lower the number of cases related to child neglect. These laws generally specify that parents are not guilty of neglect simply because they allow a child to:
• Walk or bike to school
• Play outside unsupervised
• Stay home alone for a short time
• Run errands alone
• Ride public transportation
…so long as the child is of “sufficient age and maturity” to handle the activity safely.
> “How often had your parents or other adult care-givers slapped, hit, or kicked you?” [physical assault]
That's an incredibly loose definition of "physical assault"; one that covers both situations where is it clearly better for the child to be separated from its parents, and also situations where it is clearly not.
>In general, though, it's tough to justify non-pareto tradeoffs between false negatives and false positives in this case. Both outcomes are extremely bad.
The way society usually deals with cases like this is to have some defaults (e.g. "presumption of innocence") and only depart from the defaults in extreme/clear-cut cases. I don't see anything "tough to justify" here any more than with anything else relating to the criminal justice system.
If you think any "slapping" or "hitting" is "physical assault" as a manner of principle, then the definition is fine. However, a cursory google search tells me that even in the 90s, 50% of parents *admitted* to spanking their children (Footnote 1), and while physical punishment has gone out of fashion recently it's hardly an indication of abuse.
I was spanked once or twice as a child; funnilly enough I don't remember the spanking itself (just my parents telling me it was hurting them more than it was hurting me), so maybe ask your parents if they ever spanked you?
In fact I am not sure there is anywhere in the world where legally speaking this is the case. Of course, you can have whatever own definition of "physical assault" you want, but don't expect it to mean anything in my world.
Well yes, I agree it's not much more tough than other tradeoffs in criminal justice, but those are hard too!
There's the old maxim that "I'd rather let 10 guilty men go free than lock one innocent man behind bars" and that has some intuitive appeal, but justifying this or any other exact ratio is difficult.
Well it's obviously not 10 innocent men behind bars to get one guilty man, so just "any" ratio obviously (to me) won't do! There are tradeoffs everywhere, and not having any opinion on what the tradeoffs should be means effectively you don't have any opinions on anything.
> “There is some very interesting research here using the shutdown in CPS reporting in NYC during COVID as a natural experiment. During the COVID shutdown, New York’s family regulation system "shrunk in almost every conceivable way." Schools closed, caseworkers adopted less intrusive tactics, and courts limited operations, so the number of investigations and family separations plummeted. Despite this, the paper finds that the fall in reports did not lead to a rise in child maltreatment; in fact, “child fatalities fell, as did reports of child neglect and abuse,” suggesting that many of the marginal reports that did not happen during COVID would have been false positives.”
Very skeptical of this. A shrinking of the family regulation system and the absence of mandatory reporters driven by school shutdowns would predict a large decrease in observed maltreatment. This is precisely what happened in Florida (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7441889/pdf/main.pdf), and the variation in maltreatment rates is explained by school closures. This does not imply much about true maltreatment rates. There are good reasons to think they would have increased, in fact.
A decrease in child fatalities would also be expected, for separate reasons: less cars on the road, less time outside, etc. This decrease says nothing about the distribution of false positives of maltreatment under previous reporting systems, partly because base rates for abuse related deaths are so low anyway.
> “Clearly, the false positive rate of reports is going up, because fewer of them are ever substantiated. But a false positive visit by a CPS agent is nearly as costly as a false positive substantiation that might lead to family separation.”
Is this a typo? A false positive of substantiation is far more costly.
This is a tricky subject to draw conclusions about. Privacy laws make evaluating individual cases extremely difficult, every news article we read is one side of the story with the social services people always saying they cannot comment for privacy reasons. Evaluating abuse and neglect is a fuzzy concept that doesn't fit into neat statistical boxes nicely. Then there is the problem that every municipality in the US does things differently in ways that are opaque to outsiders, with potentially very large differences by state. The types of data collected, its classification, and quality vary widely.
I have been very disappointed when looking at studies trying to answer basic questions about social services interventions with such low quality data. It's hard to know what conclusions, if any, we should draw from the COVID study with so many atypical, confounding changes happening simultaneously and the additional difficulties in measuring how much abuse and neglect actually happened. This is a very complicated and important subject that deserves more public attention and oversight.
Interesting article. I don’t know much about the topic but I think states passing Free Range Children acts might lower the number of cases related to child neglect. These laws generally specify that parents are not guilty of neglect simply because they allow a child to:
• Walk or bike to school
• Play outside unsupervised
• Stay home alone for a short time
• Run errands alone
• Ride public transportation
…so long as the child is of “sufficient age and maturity” to handle the activity safely.
Currently, 6 states have done so since 2018.
which states?
1. Utah (2018) – First state to pass such a law
2. Texas (2021) – Included protections in a child welfare reform bill
3. Oklahoma (2021) – Passed similar protections
4. Colorado (2023) – Adopted a free-range parenting bill
5. Virginia (2024) – Passed protections for independent childhood activities
6. Arkansas (2023) – Enacted a narrowly tailored version
Other states have considered similar legislation, and the trend has slowly gained bipartisan support.
"Free Range Children" acts is something that I have never heard of. Thanks for sharing!
> “How often had your parents or other adult care-givers slapped, hit, or kicked you?” [physical assault]
That's an incredibly loose definition of "physical assault"; one that covers both situations where is it clearly better for the child to be separated from its parents, and also situations where it is clearly not.
>In general, though, it's tough to justify non-pareto tradeoffs between false negatives and false positives in this case. Both outcomes are extremely bad.
The way society usually deals with cases like this is to have some defaults (e.g. "presumption of innocence") and only depart from the defaults in extreme/clear-cut cases. I don't see anything "tough to justify" here any more than with anything else relating to the criminal justice system.
why do you think it is an incredibly loose definition of physical assault?
It seems designed to conflate spanking and child abuse.
If you think any "slapping" or "hitting" is "physical assault" as a manner of principle, then the definition is fine. However, a cursory google search tells me that even in the 90s, 50% of parents *admitted* to spanking their children (Footnote 1), and while physical punishment has gone out of fashion recently it's hardly an indication of abuse.
I was spanked once or twice as a child; funnilly enough I don't remember the spanking itself (just my parents telling me it was hurting them more than it was hurting me), so maybe ask your parents if they ever spanked you?
Footnote 1: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2768829
that is what physical assault means, yes
Legally speaking, not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporal_punishment_of_minors_in_the_United_States : "as of 2024, the spanking of children is legal in all 50 states"
In fact I am not sure there is anywhere in the world where legally speaking this is the case. Of course, you can have whatever own definition of "physical assault" you want, but don't expect it to mean anything in my world.
Well yes, I agree it's not much more tough than other tradeoffs in criminal justice, but those are hard too!
There's the old maxim that "I'd rather let 10 guilty men go free than lock one innocent man behind bars" and that has some intuitive appeal, but justifying this or any other exact ratio is difficult.
Well it's obviously not 10 innocent men behind bars to get one guilty man, so just "any" ratio obviously (to me) won't do! There are tradeoffs everywhere, and not having any opinion on what the tradeoffs should be means effectively you don't have any opinions on anything.
> “There is some very interesting research here using the shutdown in CPS reporting in NYC during COVID as a natural experiment. During the COVID shutdown, New York’s family regulation system "shrunk in almost every conceivable way." Schools closed, caseworkers adopted less intrusive tactics, and courts limited operations, so the number of investigations and family separations plummeted. Despite this, the paper finds that the fall in reports did not lead to a rise in child maltreatment; in fact, “child fatalities fell, as did reports of child neglect and abuse,” suggesting that many of the marginal reports that did not happen during COVID would have been false positives.”
Very skeptical of this. A shrinking of the family regulation system and the absence of mandatory reporters driven by school shutdowns would predict a large decrease in observed maltreatment. This is precisely what happened in Florida (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7441889/pdf/main.pdf), and the variation in maltreatment rates is explained by school closures. This does not imply much about true maltreatment rates. There are good reasons to think they would have increased, in fact.
A decrease in child fatalities would also be expected, for separate reasons: less cars on the road, less time outside, etc. This decrease says nothing about the distribution of false positives of maltreatment under previous reporting systems, partly because base rates for abuse related deaths are so low anyway.
You also have to ask yourself what is the alternative?
Ok, maybe the parents aren't perfect, or abit neglectful, but how that compares to foster care? is foster care better?
> “Clearly, the false positive rate of reports is going up, because fewer of them are ever substantiated. But a false positive visit by a CPS agent is nearly as costly as a false positive substantiation that might lead to family separation.”
Is this a typo? A false positive of substantiation is far more costly.
This is a tricky subject to draw conclusions about. Privacy laws make evaluating individual cases extremely difficult, every news article we read is one side of the story with the social services people always saying they cannot comment for privacy reasons. Evaluating abuse and neglect is a fuzzy concept that doesn't fit into neat statistical boxes nicely. Then there is the problem that every municipality in the US does things differently in ways that are opaque to outsiders, with potentially very large differences by state. The types of data collected, its classification, and quality vary widely.
I have been very disappointed when looking at studies trying to answer basic questions about social services interventions with such low quality data. It's hard to know what conclusions, if any, we should draw from the COVID study with so many atypical, confounding changes happening simultaneously and the additional difficulties in measuring how much abuse and neglect actually happened. This is a very complicated and important subject that deserves more public attention and oversight.