Differences in Racially Disproportionate Reporting of Child Maltreatment Across Report Sources

Krase, Kathryn

doi:10.1080/15548732.2013.798763

Cited by 36 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…For biased reporting to be the primary source of racial disproportionality, reporters would have to consistently engage in explicit or implicitly biased reporting of children of color at higher rates and/or ignore or overlook the potential maltreatment of White children. Research supports this explanation, suggesting that racial minorities are overrepresented in allegations of maltreatment to CPS for all groups of reporters (Krase 2013 ).…”

Section: Implicit and Explicit Individual Bias As Cause Of Racial Andmentioning

confidence: 98%

That Which is Essential has been Made Invisible: The Need to Bring a Structural Risk Perspective to Reduce Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare

Feely

Bosk

2021

Race Soc Probl

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The racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child protective system (CPS) has been a concern for decades. Structural factors strongly influence engagement with the child welfare system and families experiencing poverty or financial hardship are at a heightened risk. The economic factors influencing child welfare involvement are further complicated by structural racism which has resulted in a greater prevalence of poverty and financial hardship for families who are Black, Native American or Alaska Native (Indigenous), or and Latino/Hispanic (Latino) and their communities. The multiple decision points within CPS are an opportunity to reify or correct for bias in child welfare outcomes. One major effort to eliminate racial disparities and disproportionalities has been to enact standardized decision-making procedures that aim to control for implicit or explicit bias in CPS. The Structured Decision-Making Model’s (SDM) actuarial-based risk assessment (RA) is the gold-standard of these efforts. In this conceptual article, we ask (1) How are structural factors accounted for in assessment of risk within CPS? and (2) What are the consequences when structural factors are left out of risk assessments procedures? We posit that the exclusion of race, ethnicity, and economic factors from the RA has inflated the importance of variables that become proxies for these factors, resulting in inaccurate assessments of risk. The construction of this tool reflects how structural racism has been overlooked as an important cause of disproportionality in CPS, with interventions then focused on individual workers and cases, rather than the system at large. We suggest a new framework for thinking about risk, the structural risk perspective, and call for a revisioning of assessment of risk within child welfare that acknowledges the social determinants of CPS involvement.

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Section: Implicit and Explicit Individual Bias As Cause Of Racial Andmentioning

confidence: 98%

That Which is Essential has been Made Invisible: The Need to Bring a Structural Risk Perspective to Reduce Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare

Feely

Bosk

2021

Race Soc Probl

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“…African American children and families are disproportionately scrutinized for suspicion of child maltreatment (Dorch et al 2010). For example, Krase (2013) found that children of color were overrepresented in referrals for suspected abuse and that the higher rates of referrals occurred across the range of reporters. In addition, racial disproportionality was found to be greater for reports than for removal, perhaps due to the success of policy mandates to reduce racial disparities in out-of-home placements often through alternative diversion programs (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2020).…”

Section: Racial Disparities In Child Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Racial Disparities in the U.S. Child Protection System Etiology and Solutions

Barbarin

2020

Int. Journal on Child Malt.

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“…And much as in the case of parole predictions (Harcourt 2015), the SDM includes past complaints and offenses, a variable that is far from race-neutral. Research on racial disparities in child welfare highlights that racial minorities are overrepresented in allegations of maltreatment to CPS for all groups of reporters (Krase 2013). By including criteria associated with disproportionality such as past complaints, the SDM (to at least some extent) reintroduces the problem it was designed to correct.…”

Section: Diverse Standardsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

Hirschman

Bosk

2019

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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Racial inequality persists despite major advances in formal, legal equality. Scholars and policymakers argue that individual biases (both explicit and implicit) combine with subjective organizational decision-making practices to perpetuate racial inequality. The standardization of decision making offers a potential solution, promising to eliminate the subjectivity that biases consequential decisions. We ask, under what conditions may standardization reduce racial inequality? Drawing on research in science studies and law and society, we argue that standardization must be understood as a heterogeneous practice capable of producing very different outcomes depending on the details of the standard and the organizational infrastructure surrounding its use. We compare selection devices—simple quantified tools for making allocation decisions—in undergraduate admissions and child welfare to highlight the complex relationships between race and standardization. Child welfare agencies adopted a colorblind actuarial device that attempted to predict which children were most at risk and then make decisions based on those predictions. In contrast, the University of Michigan’s points system explicitly considered and valued race, with the goal of increasing minority student enrollments in the context of promoting student body diversity. Comparing these cases demonstrates how actuarial standardization practices, including those adopted with the intention of reducing racial inequality, tend to reinforce an unequal status quo by ideologically reconfiguring mutable social structures into immutable individual risk factors. In contrast, nonactuarial practices that explicitly promote racial equality are vulnerable to political challenges as they violate norms of colorblindness and cannot be defended in terms of their predictive validity.

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Differences in Racially Disproportionate Reporting of Child Maltreatment Across Report Sources

Cited by 36 publications

References 28 publications

That Which is Essential has been Made Invisible: The Need to Bring a Structural Risk Perspective to Reduce Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare

That Which is Essential has been Made Invisible: The Need to Bring a Structural Risk Perspective to Reduce Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare

Racial Disparities in the U.S. Child Protection System Etiology and Solutions

Standardizing Biases: Selection Devices and the Quantification of Race

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