Maisha Joefield thought she was getting by pretty well as a young single mother in Brooklyn, splurging on her daughter, Deja, even though money was tight. When Deja was a baby, she bought her Luvs instead of generic diapers when she could. When her daughter got a little older, Ms. Joefield outfitted the bedroom in their apartment with a princess bed for Deja, while she slept on a pullout couch.
She had family around, too. Though she had broken up with Dejaâs father, they spent holidays and vacations together for Dejaâs sake. Ms. Joefieldâs grandmother lived across the street, and Deja knew she could always go to her great-grandmotherâs apartment in an emergency.
One night, exhausted, Ms. Joefield put Deja to bed, and plopped into a bath with her headphones on.
âBy the time I come out, Iâm looking, I donât see my child,â said Ms. Joefield, who began frantically searching the building. Deja, who was 5, had indeed headed for the grandmotherâs house when she couldnât find her mother, but the next thing Ms. Joefield knew, it was a police matter.
âIâm thinking, Iâll explain to them what happened, and Iâll get my child,â Ms. Joefield said.
For most parents, this scenario might be a panic-inducing, but hardly insurmountable, hiccup in the long trial of raising a child. Yet for Ms. Joefield and women in her circumstances â living in poor neighborhoods, with few child care options â the consequences can be severe. Police officers removed Deja from her apartment and the Administration for Childrenâs Services placed her in foster care. Police charged Ms. Joefield with endangering the welfare of a child.
She was caught up in what lawyers and others who represent families say is a troubling and longstanding phenomenon: the power of Childrenâs Services to take children from their parents on the grounds that the childâs safety is at risk, even with scant evidence.
The agencyâs requests for removals filed in family court rose 40 percent in the first quarter of 2017, to 730 from 519, compared with the same period last year, according to figures obtained by The New York Times.
In interviews, dozens of lawyers working on these cases say the removals punish parents who have few resources. Their clients are predominantly poor black and Hispanic women, they say, and the criminalization of their parenting choices has led some to nickname the practice: Jane Crow.
âIt takes a lot as a public defender to be shocked, but these are the kinds of cases you hear attorneys screaming about in the hall,â said Scott Hechinger, a lawyer at Brooklyn Defender Services. âThereâs this judgment that these mothers donât have the ability to make decisions about their kids, and in that, society both infantilizes them and holds them to superhuman standards. In another community, your kidâs found outside looking for you because youâre in the bathtub, itâs âOh, my Godââ â a story to tell later, he said. âIn a poor community, itâs called endangering the welfare of your child.â
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