Radical Early Defense Against Family Policing

This article was written by Julia Hernandez and Tarek Ismail and published in the Yale Law Journal Forum.

“In this Essay, we explore the potential for lawyers and law-school clinics to experiment in challenging a well-oiled system at its untouched margins, within the context of a collective, community-based movement whose lodestar is abolition. Our focus, in this Essay and in our clinical law practice, are two subjudicial venues that are sites of significant vulnerability for families subject to family policing: first, investigations; and second, proceedings challenging a parent’s inclusion in registers of child maltreatment.

We call our approach radical early defense: the representation of families at the earliest moment possible, with the intention of restricting or eliminating the state’s coercive encroachment into a family’s life while directly challenging presumptions core to the FPS regime. Radical early defense stands in contrast with the predominant—though still nascent—systems-navigation model of pre-petition representation, where in the initial stages of an FPS case, advocates help parents navigate the FPS with the singular goal of avoiding a court filing against the family.”