Behind the Veil: A Family's Journey through the Criminal Justice System

I don’t know what people thought of when they saw JH’s family before their involvement with the criminal justice (CJ) system. However, I am sure they did not suspect the horrors that went on behind closed doors. JH, now about fifteen years old, was being sexually abused by his older brother and father. They both even recorded the acts. Eventually law enforcement got involved, police arrested the father and brother, the DA pressed charges, lawyers got involved, the courts sentenced them, they were incarcerated, at some point they’ll most likely have a parole hearing, and eventually might be released from prison. That is what most people think of when they think of criminal justice. Criminal justice is often erroneously limited to a crime, the

DHS is no exception. At least two of the parents whose visits I shadowed that got their children removed were in the foster care system themselves. Now as adults they have to go to DHS to see their children after they themselves grew up in the system. These two parents had hostile concerns towards DHS in their paperwork. However, this is another area where Child Welfare gets to interact with other components of the CJ system. Often times, these children are put through tremendous amounts of stress as they are often bounced around from one foster home to another never laying down any roots and having unstable relationships. These are children who might be experiencing behavioral problems, resentment towards DHS, hatred towards the police, lack of relationship with their biological parents, and indifference towards their foster parents. These are children likely to become part of the CJ system, not as victims anymore but as potential offenders. MgY, a seventeen year old, is one of the children that is under DHS custody. As I shadowed her visit, the SSA pointed at a cut on her arm and some scrape marks on her elbows. The SSA explained how she had been arrested earlier that week and how she had resisted the arrest fighting against the police. These are real cases, real juveniles that are being grown in our Child Welfare system whose cases often end up bleeding through to the other components of the CJ system. In other cases, the Child Welfare system might completely let down some children. In one case, one of the SSAs was transporting AC, when he started telling her how the foster parents did not feed him, withhold food and use humiliation as punishment, as well as maltreat him and his brother. From AC’s perspective, DHS was supposed to make life better. They took him from his parents, because the situation was supposed to get better, yet he is now harmed by the very system meant to protect