Target Conditions, Not Families

Parents call on NYC’s next mayor and City Council to reverse our city’s over-investment in family policing and under-investment in communities

New York City’s next mayor and incoming City Council will inherit a vastly inequitable and harmful family policing system. State intervention in Black and brown families in NYC has grown under the De Blasio administration — as have calls for justice.

Candidates are being called upon to share their plans to address policing, incarceration and racial justice. Yet a parallel racist and harmful system is family policing by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and by the state hotline that drives over-surveillance of families.

This brief outlines parents’ demands to ensure that Black families matter under NYC policy and law. It is possible to operationalize a new paradigm of family support that moves away from mandated reporting and state intervention as the front line for child safety and toward intentionally creating public policy, community institutions and peer networks to connect and lift families.