New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services deserves one thing: consistency.
For years, the agency has argued that “systemic racism” is the core problem undermining its work. Now, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly released citywide Racial Equity Plan, ACS is leaning even harder into that claim.
The trouble is that agency leaders have yet to produce solid evidence backing that diagnosis — while the solutions being promoted risk leaving more children, regardless of race, exposed to serious harm.
The plan, released Tuesday, states that “racism and biases” against black and Hispanic families “influence the reports made to the Statewide Central Register,” arguing that racial disparities appear “at the earliest stages of child welfare contact.”
Its proof? Last year, black and Hispanic families accounted for 36.1% and 46.2% of SCR intakes, respectively, while white children represented 6.3% and Asian children 3.6%.
But the fact that black kids are reported at higher rates is not prima facie evidence of racism: Black children are more than twice as likely nationwide to be the victims of maltreatment as their white peers and 12 times as likely as Asian children.
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Nationwide, black children die as a result of abuse and neglect at more than three times the rate of white children.
In other words, one would expect families to be reported for abuse and neglect at higher rates if they actually are abusing and neglecting (not to mention killing) their children at higher rates.
In response to these disparities, ACS proposes to make race and ethnicity a central focus of its function, by classifying cases finely and releasing more data disaggregated by race.
The one piece of information it doesn’t intend to disaggregate by race is data on child victims of abuse and neglect.
Moreover, the agency’s extensive list of “Racial Equity Goals” includes not a single mention of lowering child maltreatment rates.
Reducing racial inequity trumps reducing abuse and neglect every time.
The plan says: “There are many instances where a family is reported to the state unnecessarily . . . as a child is not in danger of maltreatment, and the family would be better served by supportive services or concrete resources rather than a child protection response.”
How many instances? It gives no answer — but the agency is nevertheless committed to reducing these reports.
ACS will promote “a citywide culture shift among mandated reporters” — teachers, nurses, cops and others — “from ‘when in doubt, call the SCR’ to ‘you can support a family without having to report a family,’ when a child is not in danger of maltreatment.”
But as the spate of tragic deaths in families known to ACS has shown, the agency seems to have no idea when a child is in danger of maltreatment.
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By 2034, ACS pledges also to “ensure that more than 30% of cases are diverted to the CARES program,” its “non-investigatory” child-protection pathway.
It calls CARES “a core strategy for combating racial disparity and promoting social justice . . . by shifting low-to-moderate risk cases away from a traditional investigation to a collaborative and less intrusive response for families.”
But again, it’s not clear that ACS knows which cases are low-risk.
Meanwhile, by telling teachers and others not to report problems like chronic absenteeism, or kids coming to school hungry or without being bathed, ACS is blinding itself to kids in danger.
These are often signs of serious dysfunction in a family, commonly resulting from addiction or untreated mental illness
By suppressing reports, ACS cannot make proper decisions about when a family needs intervention.
Instead, ACS plans to give families more “concrete supports.”
They want to open more Family Enrichment Centers, for instance, stocked with resources like laundry facilities.
Yet parents engaged in chronic abuse or neglect of their children are unlikely to voluntarily walk into an FEC — and free washing machines won’t stop their behavior.
Finally, ACS’s goals for the city’s juvenile-justice population, of which it’s also in charge, are equally wrongheaded.
The agency promises to strengthen “restorative justice” practices in secure detention facilities — that is, have perpetrators sit down with the victims of their crimes to talk it out, instead of imposing real consequences.
Again, the purpose of this ACS plan is to reduce racial disparities in punishment; that’s why the agency nowhere acknowledges that restorative-justice techniques are ineffective in reducing recidivism.
Indeed, over the last half-decade when these tactics have been employed, juvenile recidivism in the city is either up or stable.
ACS has been plagued by woke and ineffective policies for years now.
Now it has a mayor who is equally committed to them.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.