What the prison system is to adults, the child welfare system is to children.

All across America, children are being subjected to the same restrictions, surveillance, and disempowerment that we reserve for those who have been convicted of crimes. They are being monitored, moved, medicated, and managed not because they broke the law, but because a broken system labeled their families unfit. And like prisoners, they are expected to accept whatever is done to them without resistance.

They say it’s for protection.
They say it’s temporary.
They say it’s in the child’s best interest.

But when you look closely, CPS doesn’t look like safety.
It looks like confinement.
It looks like control.
It looks like punishment wrapped in policy.

Caged Without Bars

• Prisoners are moved from cell to cell. Children are moved from home to home.
• Prisoners are assigned ID numbers. Children are assigned case numbers.
• Prisoners are watched by parole officers. Children are monitored by caseworkers.
• Prisoners are told where to sleep, what to eat, when to talk. Children in care are told the same often medicated, restrained, silenced.
• Prisoners are allowed limited, monitored visitation. Children in CPS see their families under strict supervision if they’re allowed to see them at all.

And just like prison, complaints don’t lead to compassion. They lead to retaliation transfers, black marks, threats of institutionalization.

The Profit Machine

Neither system runs on justice. They run on money.

• Private prisons profit per inmate, per day.
• Child welfare agencies are funded per child, per day.

Through Title IV-E, states are reimbursed for every child removed and placed in state custody. Each child is worth thousands in administrative fees, foster care placements, and federal incentives.

Just like the prison industrial complex, CPS has become its own industry. The more children taken, the more money flows.

It’s not protection. It’s production.

And while the paperwork may read “neglect” or “abuse,” the truth is often far more sinister: many families are shattered under false pretenses, vague allegations, cultural misunderstandings, false reports, and custody disputes. Children are pressured to repeat what they’ve been coached to say. Parents who discipline with love are accused of harm. Those who’ve overcome addiction are treated as if they never changed. Homes full of order are labeled unstable. And all too often, the motive isn’t safety it’s numbers. Quotas. Funding.

Psychological Warfare

Both systems dehumanize. Both strip away identity.

Children in CPS don’t just lose their homes they lose their schools, their routines, their relationships, and often their names. They’re reclassified, re-labeled, and reprogrammed to submit.

Their trauma is medicalized. Their resistance is criminalized. They’re taught to stop asking “Why me?” and start learning “This is how it is.”

They are not nurtured. They are managed. Just like prisoners.

A Legacy Rooted in Injustice

None of this is new. The same systems that exploited Black bodies in slavery now profit from family destruction.

After abolition came convict leasing. After convict leasing came mass incarceration. And alongside it grew the child welfare system, a cleaner and quieter form of control that now destroys the sanctity of family, minute by minute.

Poor families. Black families. Disabled families. Targeted. Watched. Separated.

The legacy is not broken. It is functioning exactly as it was designed.

Except These Aren’t Criminals. They’re Children.

They didn’t hurt anyone. They didn’t break the law. They just had the misfortune of being born into a country riddled with profit margins, where poverty is treated like a crime, love like a liability, and structure like torture.

And just like prisoners they are expected to take whatever is dished to them, without question.

This is Your Sunday Spotlight

We do not have one prison system in America. We have two.

One built for adults.
And one built for children but disguised as care.

It is time to say what this really is.
It is time to stop normalizing trauma.
It is time to stop funding systems that break what they claim to protect.

Because our children are not inmates.
And families are not holding cells.

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” — Frederick Douglass

Download the companion infographic:
Click here to download “The Hidden Prison System: What CPS Really Is”