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Police Need Warrants to Search Homes. Child Welfare Agents Almost Never Get One

69 points by sudobash1 4y ago

sudobash1 4y ago
I appreciate the Miranda-style warning suggestion. I wonder why there haven't been more cases brought up to require Miranda warnings for more situations than just arrests. It is important information for people to know, and good for the authorities to remind themselves of other people's rights.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
1123581321 4y ago
Good reporting. Growing up, the conventional wisdom was that child services would punish families that made them get a warrant with even more unreasonable inspection and a slanted write up. I suspect not much has changed, but this New York law is so oppressive that it’s probably worth the community involving warrants more often to force these inspections to become more cursory due to limited resources.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
xupybd 4y ago
This boils my blood. The state should tread very carefully when breaking up families. Yes some children need protection but when the state starts to take over the role of parents they gain a scary amount of influence of the next generation. I know the intent is very different but this is what the Hitler youth was all about. My father worked in this field for years. It was a mess. Once public case would occur with a child dying at the hands of an abusive parent. So policy would change. Then there would be a high profile case where they got it wrong and took a child off of a good family. So policy would change again. Every time the blame would fall on the social workers. It nearly broke my dad when he was managing a district branch. I have no solutions as I want children to be safe at home but it sucks from every angle.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > I know the intent is very different but this is what the Hitler youth was all about. This is wildly inaccurate. The Hitler youth was a fully voluntary group -- in fact, at times exclusionary even among favored in-groups. It was more like what would happen if you combined elite prep schooling, the youth wing ("Young _s") of a fringe political party, and scouting into a single organization. This didn't change until 1936, and even then, the upper ranks of the group were dominated by the description above.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    My point wasn't the the mechanism is identical it's that the utility or the possible utility is manifested in the Hitler youth. I'm not saying the Hitler youth was compulsory or that state influence need to be compulsory to arouse my concern. Having an arm of the state that focuses on installing values in children can allow bad things to happen. Families can install bad values in children but the distributed nature of families mean the system is a little more stable, as you're less likely to see the same bad values installed en masse. However, this does happen as problem cultures arise in populations. We see this particularly in urban gangs. But even in this instance the concentration of power is reduced.
    - thwayunion 4y ago
      > Having an arm of the state that focuses on installing values in children can allow bad things to happen... But even in this instance the concentration of power is reduced. The Hitler Youth makes, if anything, the exact opposite point. What the Hitler youth demonstrates is that a movement that focuses on installing their values in children can use radicalized youth as a powerful component in their push toward fascist revolution. This is why the German response to the Hitler Youth was to criminalize the organization, not to dismantle child welfare laws. The entire discussion is a red herring because "installing values in children" is not the goal of child welfare agencies.
      - xupybd 4y ago
lbwtaylor 4y ago
>> Only about 5% of these kids are ultimately found to have been physically or sexually abused. That statement tells you a lot about the "article". Only someone with a very strong agenda would view 5% child abuse as "only". "Mission Accomplished" I guess. The opinion pieces sites one example of overreach by officials. Where are the stories about children saved from abuse? I guess that isn't relevant to the discussion. One month of her children being taken away is a serious result. But there's a lot at risk here.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  > That statement tells you a lot about the "article". Only someone with a very strong agenda would view 5% child abuse as "only". It also entirely ignores findings of neglect. An agent who inspects a home and discovers that the children are sleeping on the living room floor and have no clean clothing, for example, hasn't found evidence that children have been "physically or sexually abused", but has made a finding of neglect which is probably sufficient for intervention. This isn't to say that there aren't problems here. The article goes on to discuss a number of real problems in home inspections from child services -- but this statistic alone isn't representative of the real situation.
- PortiaBerries 4y ago
  So if 5% of extra-legal searches result in dirt, then extra-legal searches are worth it?
  - Volundr 4y ago
    Pretty much my thinking as well. Exactly what % hit rate do we need before we give up on the 4th amendment? 5% seems shockingly low to me. I'm all for protecting children, but if you have evidence one is being abused... get a warrant! Policing was never supposed to be easy.
    - anm89 4y ago
      Constitutional rights are not supposed to be conditional on some parties perceived utility to society of violating them I understand you are potentially agreeing with me but framing this this way at all is problematic.

69 points by sudobash1 4y ago

I appreciate the Miranda-style warning suggestion. I wonder why there haven't been more cases brought up to require Miranda warnings for more situations than just arrests. It is important information for people to know, and good for the authorities to remind themselves of other people's rights.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

1123581321 4y ago

Good reporting. Growing up, the conventional wisdom was that child services would punish families that made them get a warrant with even more unreasonable inspection and a slanted write up. I suspect not much has changed, but this New York law is so oppressive that it’s probably worth the community involving warrants more often to force these inspections to become more cursory due to limited resources.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

xupybd 4y ago

This boils my blood. The state should tread very carefully when breaking up families. Yes some children need protection but when the state starts to take over the role of parents they gain a scary amount of influence of the next generation. I know the intent is very different but this is what the Hitler youth was all about. My father worked in this field for years. It was a mess. Once public case would occur with a child dying at the hands of an abusive parent. So policy would change. Then there would be a high profile case where they got it wrong and took a child off of a good family. So policy would change again. Every time the blame would fall on the social workers. It nearly broke my dad when he was managing a district branch. I have no solutions as I want children to be safe at home but it sucks from every angle.

thwayunion 4y ago
> I know the intent is very different but this is what the Hitler youth was all about. This is wildly inaccurate. The Hitler youth was a fully voluntary group -- in fact, at times exclusionary even among favored in-groups. It was more like what would happen if you combined elite prep schooling, the youth wing ("Young _s") of a fringe political party, and scouting into a single organization. This didn't change until 1936, and even then, the upper ranks of the group were dominated by the description above.
- xupybd 4y ago
  My point wasn't the the mechanism is identical it's that the utility or the possible utility is manifested in the Hitler youth. I'm not saying the Hitler youth was compulsory or that state influence need to be compulsory to arouse my concern. Having an arm of the state that focuses on installing values in children can allow bad things to happen. Families can install bad values in children but the distributed nature of families mean the system is a little more stable, as you're less likely to see the same bad values installed en masse. However, this does happen as problem cultures arise in populations. We see this particularly in urban gangs. But even in this instance the concentration of power is reduced.
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    > Having an arm of the state that focuses on installing values in children can allow bad things to happen... But even in this instance the concentration of power is reduced. The Hitler Youth makes, if anything, the exact opposite point. What the Hitler youth demonstrates is that a movement that focuses on installing their values in children can use radicalized youth as a powerful component in their push toward fascist revolution. This is why the German response to the Hitler Youth was to criminalize the organization, not to dismantle child welfare laws. The entire discussion is a red herring because "installing values in children" is not the goal of child welfare agencies.
    - xupybd 4y ago

lbwtaylor 4y ago

>> Only about 5% of these kids are ultimately found to have been physically or sexually abused. That statement tells you a lot about the "article". Only someone with a very strong agenda would view 5% child abuse as "only". "Mission Accomplished" I guess. The opinion pieces sites one example of overreach by officials. Where are the stories about children saved from abuse? I guess that isn't relevant to the discussion. One month of her children being taken away is a serious result. But there's a lot at risk here.

duskwuff 4y ago
> That statement tells you a lot about the "article". Only someone with a very strong agenda would view 5% child abuse as "only". It also entirely ignores findings of neglect. An agent who inspects a home and discovers that the children are sleeping on the living room floor and have no clean clothing, for example, hasn't found evidence that children have been "physically or sexually abused", but has made a finding of neglect which is probably sufficient for intervention. This isn't to say that there aren't problems here. The article goes on to discuss a number of real problems in home inspections from child services -- but this statistic alone isn't representative of the real situation.
PortiaBerries 4y ago
So if 5% of extra-legal searches result in dirt, then extra-legal searches are worth it?
- Volundr 4y ago
  Pretty much my thinking as well. Exactly what % hit rate do we need before we give up on the 4th amendment? 5% seems shockingly low to me. I'm all for protecting children, but if you have evidence one is being abused... get a warrant! Policing was never supposed to be easy.
  - anm89 4y ago
    Constitutional rights are not supposed to be conditional on some parties perceived utility to society of violating them I understand you are potentially agreeing with me but framing this this way at all is problematic.