Think of the Children

This is not about Immigration

A woman in NC was arrested for letting her 9 year old play in a park unsupervised several hours each day for two days while she was at work at McDonalds. When another parent asked the girl where her mother was the child replied "at work", this parent then called police.  The mother admitted leaving her child at the park and was arrested, child protective services took custody of the child.

Is this or should this be, a crime?

At 9 I would walk with my friends a few blocks to the playground at our elementary school, unsupervised.  "But it was a different world back then", you may say.  Is it? 

Discounting abduction by family members, usually involving custody disputes, abduction by a stranger is very rare. Statistics seem to vary widely depending on who's talking, but a common figure based on FBI statistics seems to be around 1 in 2,100,000.  The odds of your child being killed in the car on the way to the park are 1 in 23,000.  Should we be taking children away from their parents for letting them play, alone in the park? Or driving them there?

Now I wouldn't advocate letting your nine year old child play alone in the park but does it warrant an arrest and the state taking custody?  Frankly the odds of the child be abused or killed in state custody are far higher than of that happening in the park.

Riddle me this Batman: Why do we take a child away from it's mother if she leaves it at the park for a few hours, but give the child back if the mother lets it walk 1500 miles from El Salvador to Texas?

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