We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America

Kalton Harris says it's pretty common for young men like Dontay to drop out of programs designed to help them. All the barriers to good jobs, and all the other barriers that exist out in the world outside the program, are part of the reason, he says, but there is another: they have been deeply hurt at a young age, and they don't know how to deal with it.

If you come from privilege,' she explained, 'and you respect money and power, and the people in your court don't have any of that- it's unconcious and sometimes concious racism and classism.

Some kids, when they grown, come back and say, 'Why didn't you fight for us?' And I swear I did. We all did.

Unlike kids in family homes, kids in foster care today rely on a separate state agency, Residential Child Care Investigations, to look into reports of suspected abuse or neglect. That agency has a tendency to downgrade abuse reports without ever investigating them. During four months in 2019, the agency ruled out nearly half of the more than nine hundred abuse reports it received- with no investigation whatsoever.

Ain't nobody want to adopt me,' he says. 'I thought if I did good, they would let me get back with my brothers, but when they didnt' I said fuck it.

In fact, about 75 percent of child welfare cases involve not abuse but neglect, which can often be caused by or confused with poverty.

motley throng of infantile misery and childish guilt