Wards of the state The long shadow of American foster care

This collection of heartbreaking accounts documents instances of failure by the U.S. foster care system. For decades, many sociologists maintained that former foster children who later committed crimes had suffered irreversible damage due to their early-life circumstances, making it impossible for them to conform to societal expectations. Instead, investigative author Rowe (The Spider and the Fly, 2017) posits that it's the foster care system itself that turns children into criminals. She follows real people (she uses pseudonyms but has verified all assertions to the best of her abilities), documenting underregulated, haphazard practices, unsafe shelters where vicious bullying, drug use, and rape were common, and lethal examples of draconian law enforcement, inequitable legal systems, and an abysmal lack of community caring. Rowe maintains that too many of these individuals fly just below our radar--until they explode into our headlines. She documents at least one hopeful, if not completely happy, ending. Based on interviews with subjects ranging from teens to people in their mid-fifties, this is a well-reasoned and compelling call for change.

Journalist Rowe (The Spider and the Fly) rips the Band-Aid off the ugly wound that is the American foster care system in this searing j'accuse. Drawing on frank interviews with current and former foster youth, Rowe exposes the cruelty of a system that leaves the young feeling worthless and ignored and plausibly links it to other societal problems, writing that foster care is "an unacknowledged factor driving mass homelessness, drug addiction, and property crimes," and "one of the gears powering America's incarceration complex." Rowe's profile subjects include Maryanne, who is among the many foster children who were unadopted--"dumped... back into the pool of unwanted kids like a Christmas puppy grown too big." Maryanne later fatally shot a friend and was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison; Rowe notes that her fate was not atypical, reporting that former foster kids comprise at least 20% of America's prison population. Others she profiles include Art Longworth, who wrote award-winning memoirs about his experiences in foster care and prison, and Sixto Cancel, who survived horrific abuse. Rowe is blunt about what is needed to change the system--reducing how many children end up in it by providing families with stable housing, food, and medical care. It's a powerful indictment of a child welfare system seemingly designed to "pump out" adults "ill-equipped" to flourish. (May)