Taylor Walker

With liberal use of the catchall category of “general neglect,” LA County’s DCFS removes between 4,000 and 6,000 kids from their homes every year and places them in foster care.

This is the first in a multi-part series about racial and economic disparities in LA County’s child welfare system, and the impact family surveillance and separation has on kids and their parents.

The coalition, said co-founder Lamikia Castillo, demanded “that the LA County Board of Supervisors change its practices,” so that “families are not pulled apart.”

Inspector General Max Huntsman said he “received complaints from pregnant people in custody and their loved ones” about food and bottled water availability in jail, as well as out-of-cell time for exercise, and other issues.

There's a pressing need for LA’s Office of Diversion and Reentry to scale up its diversion capacity for moms, but so far the money to do so hasn’t been there.

Moms talk about what it’s like to be pregnant in jail, and about their lives before and after incarceration.

In the third part of this multi-part series, we look at some of the ways in which the process of diversion can jump the rails.