Torn Apart : How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and offers a ';a brilliant and impassioned call for abolition' (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow)

Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But asTorn Apartuncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a ';family policing system' that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnarea majority ofBlack children,puttingtheir families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families andplacedin foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment.

The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing,Torn Apartargues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities.