Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

by Virginia Eubanks

When Janine says that “everybody is a risk,” she doesn’t mean that anyone might hit their child. She means that every parent in her community could be profiled by the AFST, simply for being poor and Black. According to statistics gathered by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, in 37 states, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, African American and Native American children are removed from their homes at rates that significantly exceed their representation in the general population. For example, in 2011, 51 percent of children in foster care in Alaska were Native American, though Native Americans make up only 17 percent of the youth population. In Illinois, 53 percent of the children in foster care were African American, though African Americans make up only 16 percent of the youth population. In 2016, 48 percent of children in foster care in Allegheny County were African American, though they made up only 18 percent of the county’s children and youth.

I wish we could get data to demonstrate that physical and sexual child abuse is equally common across race & economic status - whereas "neglect" might be more common among the poor because it is due to poverty (i.e. how can you feed your kid if you don't have food). People are tagged by the models because of how poverty has impacted humans decisions to report cases - but poverty is not really predictive of abuse, its just predictive of someone catching the abuser.