Expanding your point further, because I agree with you in that the CYA mentality is everywhere. Whenever I see news about something bad happening, inevitably i

Expanding your point further, because I agree with you in that the CYA mentality is everywhere. Whenever I see news about something bad happening, inevitably it turns into a blame game. What did someone not do? The case of the mom getting arrested (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested-for-letting-a-9-year-old-play-at-the-park-alone/374436/ http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/arrested...) infuriates me. The person who called the police (and, really, everyone involved "up the chain") was faced with a decision: A.) Do nothing B.) Call the police (escalate upwards in authority) C.) Do something else, like find a safer place for the child to be, if you truly believe the park to be dangerous. A is free, but comes with the non-zero cost of being "the person who did nothing" when something bad happens to the girl (unlikely, but possible). B is cheap (you need to hang around for the police and all that entails), but is an easy way to attain the moral high ground. C is expensive and really you'd be no better off than if you did B. These three options exist for everyone involved, and they escalated upwards until they found someone who had enough power to do C cheaply enough that they didn't need to do B. That involved taking the child away. Passing the buck upwards is easy to do and seldom will someone come after you for it. I don't have a good answer for how this can be solved, because I can't say with good conscience that it is never the right thing to do - there are obvious cases where it is. I also find the amusing that my thoughts on "how would I make this right?" lead to "that mother should sue the state for lost wages or something". Clearly we have too many lawyers.