Becoming Wards of the State: Race, Crime, and Childhood in the Struggle for Foster Care Integration, 1920s to 1960s

Abstract

Using archival materials from the Domestic Relations Court of New York City, this article traces the conflict between private institutions and the state over responsibility for neglected African American children in the early twentieth century. After a long history of exclusion by private child welfare, the court assumed public responsibility for the protection of children of all races. Yet, in an arrangement of delegated governance, judges found themselves unable to place non-white children because of the enduring exclusionary policies of private agencies. When the situation became critical, the City sought to wrest control from private agencies by developing a supplemental public foster care system. This compromise over responsibility racialized the developing public foster care system of New York City, and it transformed frameworks of child protection as a social problem. The findings highlight the political salience surrounding issues of racial access in the delegated welfare state. Tracing how the conflict over access unfolded in New York City child protection provides an empirical case for understanding how the delegation of social welfare to private agencies can actually weaken racial integration efforts, generate distinct modes of social welfare inclusion, and racialize perceptions of social problems.

Contested by the State: Institutional Offloading in the Case of Crossover Youth

“…Second, by developing the framework of institutional offloading with the case of crossover youth, the findings challenge the (often implicit) assumption that more coercive institutions automatically assume responsibility for people sent their way, resulting in the funneling of marginalized state subjects toward increasingly coercive control over the life course. The present study does not question the wealth of evidence documenting how institutional actors direct members of marginalized groups—particularly those who are poor and Black or Brown—toward coercive control (Fong 2020; Gowan and Whetstone 2012; Harris 2009; Kohler-Hausmann 2018; Nolan 2011; Rios 2011; Shedd 2015; Simmons 2020; Stuart 2016), nor am I disputing the notion that penal institutions often become “warehouses” or “dumping grounds” for populations perceived as unmanageable by other state institutions (Emerson 1969; Garland 1985; Jacobs 1990; Wacquant 2009). Rather, the framework of institutional offloading developed here encourages us to understand coercive control as an interlocking state process.…”

“…These laws have restricted the supply, and thus increased the cost, of the typical resources available to manage crossover youth. The privatization of those resources, particularly in the case of group homes, further limits state actors’ options, as private organizational actors operating within a capitalist system are motivated to optimize resources without the same incentives to minimize blame as their public counterparts (Morgan and Campbell 2011; Simmons 2020). At the same time, the progressive movement to disrupt the punishment pipeline means state actors are trying to optimize limited resources while facing greater public scrutiny (Hood 2011; Lara-Millán 2021).…”

The Racial Origins of Foster Home Care

“…By contrast, they recommended foster care in 21% of White cases and 43% of Black cases (New York 1940). In many ways, the rise of race-matched foster family care represented a push toward equal access in a climate of segregation, especially at a time when judges often felt their only recourse was to return a child home or send them to a State Training School (Simmons 2020).…”

Resignation without relief: democratic governance and the relinquishing of parental rights

“…Parents like Qasim "locate [d] the state as a primary danger in their children's lives" (Gurusami, 2019, p. 129) and aimed to relieve children of this harm by withdrawing from the process. The idea of protecting children from the state was particularly salient for Black parents intimately aware of the history of racially stratified government intervention into family life (Roberts, 2000;Simmons, 2020). Because CPS involvement unfolds against this backdrop, Black and white parents experienced both their cases and resignation differently.…”