From the ACLU, this is at Liberty. I'm Kendall Seasmeyer, your host.

Keeping kids safe is one of our greatest responsibilities as adults. But what if the main tool we use to protect children is actually preventing everyone

from getting the resources they need? Every state in the country has mandatory reporting laws

that require professionals such as teachers, coaches, nurses, and more to report any suspected

or observed instances of child abuse or neglect to the state.

Now, while this sounds logical and even a really good thing, its application has effectively

made a surveillance apparatus out of educators, healthcare, and social workers that leaves

the family's most in need of help, afraid to ask for it, at the risk of

becoming the center of an investigation. The pitfalls of mandatory reporting are especially

evident in Pennsylvania. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal, Pennsylvania

lawmakers passed sweeping reforms, expanding mandatory reporting and the definition

of child abuse to include low-level neglect.

A difficult to define term that often targets and punishes circumstances that arise from

poverty.

Since reforms were implemented in 2014, reports have skyrocketed.

But recent studies have shown that this increase has not turned up any additional victims of child abuse, but rather overstretched the system.

Of the one million calls over five years since the reform policy,

800,000 calls were in regard to low-level neglect allegations stemming from poverty,

and nine and ten of those were dismissed following traumatic housing searches and family questioning that

disproportionately target black and brown families. This targeting leaves parents looking

for help and support vulnerable to the family regulation apparatus, a punitive system,

rife with bias that often exacerbates inequities and trauma, instead of

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