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Comment by fweespeech | Hacker News Reader

http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-...

> One afternoon this past April, a Florida mom and dad I'll call Cindy and Fred could not get home in time to let their 11-year-old son into the house. The boy didn't have a key, so he played basketball in the yard. He was alone for 90 minutes. A neighbor called the cops, and when the parents arrived—having been delayed by traffic and rain—they were arrested for negligence.

> "My older one was the so-called 'victim,'" she said during a phone interview. But since she and her husband were charged with felony neglect, the younger boy had to be removed from the home, too.

If you are not liked by your neighbors, it seems like a very real risk.

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You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you know how that news story is always anecdote and not data?

That's pretty much what you just did.

Sort of.

There are two claims someone might make. "X is common, and it poses a meaningful risk", or "X exists, and it poses a non-zero risk". Anecdotes do not help much with the first claim, but they do help with the second.

So perhaps we can agree that child abductions CAN happen, and that CPS overreach DOES occur. Then we can review the real risks of both.

I've seen data on the real risk of child abductions. I have never seen data on the real risks of CPS overreach. (And it would be difficult to define "overreach".) Does anyone know of any such data?

(Because also, in the complete absence of actual data, anecdotes are better than nothing.)

And in the absence of meaningful data BETTER TO BE SAFE THAN SORRY! said the overprotective parent that wouldn't let their 12 year old kid bike 5 blocks to school.

Seriously, once you see the parallels between how parents afraid of criminals and parents afraid of CPS talk about the risks you can't un-see them.

Number of kids abducted by strangers per year 115.

Number of kids investigated by the CPS 3.2 million.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/196467.pdf

Your second data point is not a relevant comparison. The number you need is the number of people incorrectly taken from their parents by CPS.

Of course it's relevant. I am certain that I am far from alone in expecting CPS to incorrectly take children more than 115/3.2 million = 0.0036% of the time, which means that even without knowing the exact percentage of the time that CPS is mistaken, I was convinced by those numbers that a random kid has a higher chance of being mistakenly taken by CPS than abducted by a stranger.

Are you telling me that even though you, like me, don't know the exact percentage of the time that CPS is mistaken, you expect it to be less that 0.0036%?

Yes, I do think it's less than 0.0036%.

First we see from the data that CPS declared 2.5 million of those 3.2 as "non-victims" so we can eliminate type 1 errors from almost 80% of the population right there.

Of the remaining 700k it's not inconceivable at all that in a big percentage of cases there were actually significant parental problems. Frankly I bet that type 2 errors are much more common that type 1 for this population.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/in-a-yea...

> 2.5 million of those kids were declared 'non-victims.' Another 686,000 were 'abused' or 'neglected.' And an estimated 1,640 kids died as a result.

Their error rate on non-victims is a helluva alot higher than that.

I don't have faith their error rate for victims is much better given we don't have data for that.

> A couple of very slightly uncomfortable conversations seems like a small price to pay for raising your kids in the manner you deem appropriate.

That is what I responded to.

> You know how if you talk to an overprotective parent about how it's really ok to let their kids wander around outside on their own a little they're always at the ready with a link to a news story about something horrible happening? And you know how that news story is always anecdote and not data?

You implied the extent of the risk was a couple uncomfortable conversations based on an anecdote. Hypocrisy much?

Based on personal experience, I don't have much faith in the quality of CPS investigations.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/07/in-a-yea...

> One statistic that stood out in the report: since 2008, the number of referrals to child protective service agencies (hereafter CPS) has increased by 8.3 percent, even as overall rates of actual child victimization declined by 3.3 percent during the same period. There is no system that can totally avoid putting parents who don't deserve it through investigations, despite the fact that even the best moms and dads would regard the ordeal as nightmarish. Over time, however, the number of undeserving parents so burdened seems to be increasing–and the number is large (note that "screened out" referrals are the ones deemed not even worth investigating):

The numbers are clearly moving in the wrong direction for the rate of reporting.

> He goes on to explain that while taking kids from parents in this fashion is only permitted in emergencies as a matter of law, the way things play out in practice is very different. "According to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 100,000 children who were removed in 2001–more than one in three–were later found not to have been maltreated at all,"

Given CPS investigates gets ~3.4 million complaints a year and there are ~74 million kids, a substantial number of these complaints are screened out because they are basically random/irrelevant.

I'm not in the habit of ignoring 1 in 20 odds, especially if I've got a 1 in 5 shot at it being something serious.

That is alot higher than the risk of terrorism, for instance, affecting me personally.

Does CPS have problems? Sure. No doubt. And as a society we should work on fixing these problems.

But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should.

And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight.

That's what a grownup does.

You might want to look at the burden of proof needed to remove a child from a family; or at the disruption a family experiences with a full on CPS investigation.

And that's ignoring the huge cost involved.

> But when it comes to your own individual life, you can either live your life in fear of the boogeyman or you can live your life the way you want to live it. Let your kids live their lives the way you think they should.

> That's what a grownup does.

The sheer condescension and lack of empathy you packed into a single comment is quite sad, tbh.

I tell you I have personal experience with CPS...and your response is I am terrified of a monster under my bed that isn't real.

> And if CPS shows up one day when they shouldn't, you lawyer up and fight.

Most people can't afford $50k legal bills to fight the government. Are you really this isolated and ignorant that this doesn't even occur to you?

Look, Harry, you say things like this:

> Yes, I do think it's less than 0.0036%.

I show you the false negative rate is a helluva alot higher than that and you still spout when you clearly have no clue what you are talking about.

Just walk away before you continue to embarrass yourself.

I'm not embarrassing myself. There is a lot of research literature that makes me pretty convinced that the way Americans raise their kids has gotten worse. We are, as a society, overprotective. We don't let our children out into the world enough. We don't let them experience independence early enough. We don't let them fail at small things so that they develop resilience. These are big problems.

In order to fix this we've gotta be a little defiant. If one person acts differently they're gonna be the oddball and the system is going to knock them down. Maybe it's CPS. Maybe it's a nosey neighbor. Who knows. This gets better when A LOT of people start acting differently.

Sure. If you're poor or otherwise not in a position to fight the system I don't expect you to be first in line. But I've got a dollar that says that doesn't apply to you or DanBC or some of the others in this thread. The median Hacker News reader is a white engineer with a good salary and is, more that almost anyone, in a position to stand up to the system if it causes them problems. I'm in that group too. It's our responsibility to make things better, not just for ourselves but also for the people that aren't in a position to do so on their own.

That's what I think.

> I'm not embarrassing myself.

Making blanket statements with numbers that in no way reflect reality doesn't embarrass you? Making statements about other people's life experiences from a position of clear ignorance of how the system works doesn't embarrass you?

I'm honestly concerned for you at that point because you remind me of that family friend my parents had that lived out in the desert and believed in conspiracy theories because he "felt" they were real.

> There is a lot of research literature that makes me pretty convinced that the way Americans raise their kids has gotten worse. We are, as a society, overprotective.

I'm waiting for your evidence that the risk is less than 0.0036% as you previously stated you "felt" it was.

> That's what I think.

I care about facts that can be reinforced by actual evidence on some level. You clearly do not have any in regards to the topic at hand.

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The rest of it is a tangent about your opinion on "solutions" that are, ultimately, irrelevant, unless you have evidence you've succeeded with these tactics on some level politically. Do you have such evidence?

Are you even aware the burden of proof is a preponderance of evidence in many states (for instance NY?) Or that they allow hearsay which is little more than gossip?

http://www.jdbar.com/Articles/Child-Neglect/child-neglect.ht...

> For a disposition hearing, evidence need only be material and relevant, meaning that hearsay is permitted. In addition, any new facts occurring up to the date of the dispositional hearing may be considered by the court at a dispositional hearing.

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Look, if you can't back up BOTH of your opinions with clear citations showing it is true you need to stop.

But, but, but... http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Missing-Child-King...

> The suspect then held the boy as the mom took a phone call, according to investigators. The suspect then walked out of the mall cradling the boy in her arms, police said.

If you ever answer your phone, it seems like a very real risk somebody will snatch up your baby.

The problem here is the police, not the neighbors. Why were they arrested? Did they really break the law? If not, then how were these police trained? If they did break the law, then who is making these nonsense laws?

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