Addressing Bias in Delinquency and Child Welfare Systems

This article is designed as a bench card resource for judicial officers hearing child welfare and child criminal court proceedings.  It contains practical tips and considerations for acknowledging, recognizing, and challenging bias as it appears in cases. 

However Kindly Intentioned: Structural Racism and Volunteer CASA Programs

This law review highlights how the program itself operates to give voice to white supremacy and to advance white (and middle class) community norms to the detriment of all poor families in the system, but particularly to families of color, with their voice being framed by the judicial system as common sense, community perspective, and able to ascertain and articulate the child’s best interests.

Contact with Child Protective Services is pervasive but unequally distributed by race and ethnicity in large US counties (external link)

Litigating Race: WA State OPD’s Resources on Litigating Race

Washington State OPD’s Disproportionality Legal Training Coordinator, Barbara Harris, has created this resources page. The resources and tools compiled here are intended to provide attorneys with information that will strengthen their advocacy for their clients.

We Are People.  Resources for Humanizing Language  (external link)

This resource is housed at the Osborne Association website resources page, which includes many resources for humanizing language in the work to end mass incarceration.  “For individuals and organizations working to dismantle mass incarceration and [to] support the people it affects, there is clear value in respecting and believing in human dignity: to offer opportunities that honor all of our capacities to change.”