JULY 24, 2013
Arrested for a Life Vest: When Good Intentions Make Bad Law
Erika Doring has devoted her life and career to children. She was a counselor with child protective services for 10 years and now owns Cutie Pie Consignment, a consignment store in Hood River, Oregon, that sells children’s goods. She has a daughter of her own named Elaina, whom she dotes upon. Had she been less devoted to children, she might not have ended up in cuffs and charged with—of all things—child neglect. How could such a thing happen? One day in the summer of 2010, Erika and Elaina got into the family car and prepared to head to the lake. In her haste, Erika initially forgot to bring Elaina’s life vest. After turning the air conditioning up for Elaina and parking the vehicle, she went to retrieve the vest. While she did so, a parking meter attendant spotted Elaina and notified the police, who came, saw, and issued a citation.
She was told to report to the police station, where she was handcuffed, searched, photographed, and booked. After enduring intrusive monitoring by child protective services, Erika eventually went to trial, where she was found not guilty of child neglect. The ordeal left her shaken, however, and her mug shot, being a matter of “public record,” remains on the Internet.
Erika’s painful experience is not unique. Increasingly, parents who leave their children alone for mere minutes risk being immediately cuffed and charged with crimes. Several states have statutes that prohibit parents from leaving children alone in a car for more than five or 10 minutes.
Heavy-handed intervention after mere minutes can have tremendous costs. In the first place, it imposes a burden on police departments. Officers who could be responding to rape, robbery, and murder calls waste valuable time imprisoning nonviolent offenders who have harmed nothing and nobody, and local jails waste time and money processing them and jailing them, not to mention the time and resources devoted to subsequent court appearances.
It also imposes a staggering burden upon families. It boggles the mind that anyone could think that children’s health and safety would be better served by locking their parents up for something that poses only a miniscule risk of hurting them—given that locking their parents up would certainly hurt them. And the parents may be branded for life and separated from their children.
Intervention on behalf of unattended children, whether spurred by concerns about neglect or required by statute, may be well-intentioned. Advocates of such intervention may truly be seeking the best interests of children. But meaning well is not the same thing as doing well. Just ask the Dorings. What do you think? Read the rest, Share your thoughts >>
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