10/28/2008
Deviance Seminar
Bill Vesneski
Punishing Mothers: The New Penology’s Influence on Child Welfare
Friday, Oct 31, 2008 - (Costumes welcome)
3:30-5:00 pm
Condon Hall Room 311
Abstract:
More than 500,000 maltreated children - who are disproportionately African American and nearly always poor - are in the custody of the U.S. child welfare system. The fates of these children are left to state courts to determine. Over the last 20 years the political and legal responses to child maltreatment have shifted markedly. This shift is typified by Congress’ passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) in 1997. When it was enacted, ASFA signaled a turn away from policies that emphasized the preservation and rehabilitation of families involved in the child welfare system toward an approach that highlighted terminating parents’ rights to their children. Informed by a content analysis of state child welfare legislation, this presentation explores the parallels between rejection of the rehabilitative model in child welfare law and policy and the new penology in criminal justice, including managerialism and mass incarceration. These parallels suggest that the termination of parental rights points to a societal focus on punishing, rather than assisting, women who are deemed unfit to parent.
Bill Vesneski is a graduate student in Social Work at the University of Washington. He is also a Graduate Fellow in Comparative Law and Society Studies.
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