It is child welfare’s equivalent of stop-and-frisk. It
happens over and over again, it’s traumatic, it’s usually baseless and
unnecessary, and it’s racially biased. It is a child abuse investigation.
Increasingly, across America, this kind of state-inflicted
trauma is becoming a routine part of growing up. Nationwide, a study suggests
it happens to a majority of black children. And in one Pennsylvania county,
there may be no child, or at least no impoverished child, who is spared.
