Jahmeik Modlin was found in a skeletal condition in a Harlem apartment stocked with food. He died the next day, and his three older siblings were hospitalized with severe malnutrition. The family had been on the radar of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) since 2019, before Jahmeik was born. But the agency closed its last case with the family in 2022 after determining that the children were safe, a source told the New York Times. A spokeswoman for ACS declined to offer further information, citing state law designed to protect siblings of fatal abuse victims.
According to data states submit to the federal government, about 1800 children die of abuse and neglect every year, but this figure is widely recognized to be an undercount. Among those deaths, studies suggest that between a third and a half involve families who were already known to the child protection system (CPS) through previous reports. Even in other cases where the family had no prior contact with CPS, other systems may have interacted with the child and perhaps could have intervened. Legislators, advocates and the public must have access to timely information about the circumstances leading up to child maltreatment fatalities so they can identify missed opportunities and policy and practice changes necessary to protect children. For that reason, Congress in 1996 added a provision in federal law that requires all states to provide assurances to the federal Department of Health and Human Services that they have provisions for disclosing findings and information regarding child fatalities and near fatalities from maltreatment.
Lives Cut Short surveyed state laws and policies governing access to information about child maltreatment fatalities and near fatalities. The resulting report, Keeping the Public in the Dark: How Federal and State Laws and Policies Prevent Meaningful Disclosure about Child Maltreatment Fatalities and Near Fatalities, shows that most states have such laws and practices but many of them are vague, and many have provisions that conflict with the purpose of ensuring public access to critical information. Among such provisions are those that prohibit releasing information that might harm surviving children in the families where a child was killed or seriously injured by maltreatment.
New York, at first glance, appears to be more transparent than most states in making information and findings about child maltreatment fatalities available to the public. The New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), which supervises local agencies such as ACS, is required to review all local investigations of child fatalities reported to the State Central Register and to publish a summary report within six months of the investigation. Disclosure of this information, however, occurs only if the state or local commissioner determines that it is not “contrary to the best interests of the child, the child’s siblings or other children in the household.” While the law does not provide a comprehensive definition of “contrary to the best interests,” the OCFS website does explain that OCFS conducts what it calls a “best interests determination,” sometimes assisted by “experts” from the agency’s Statewide Child Fatality Review Team. The process considers “whether publishing a fatality report is contrary to the best interests of a child’s siblings or other children in the household, what effects publication may have on the privacy of children and family, and any potentially detrimental effects publication may have on reuniting and providing services to a family.”
To understand the impact of the “best interests” determination, one needs to know the proportion of child fatalities for which New York withholds reports. The identifying numbers that the state assigns to its child fatality reports provide a useful clue. All these numbers start with a two-letter abbreviation for the region (AL for Albany, BU for Buffalo, etc.), continue with the last two digits of the year, and end with a three-digit number, starting from 001. For example, the first Albany report for 2022 would be identified as AL-22-001. Assuming that all missing numbers represent reports withheld under the “best interests determination,” about one-quarter of reports on 2022 fatalities in New York State were withheld.
The Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths Integrated Database (CANDID), maintained by Lives Cut Short, allows us to determine which child deaths reported in the media had a corresponding fatality report released by New York OCFS. CANDID combines information on child maltreatment fatalities from media reports, official fatality reviews or reports, and other available sources. New York State’s fatality reports do not include names, but they do include the dates of death as well as details about the circumstances. Therefore, one can attempt to match media coverage with the OCFS review of the same fatality. But very few maltreatment deaths occurring in 2022 and covered by the media had an OCFS review released to the public. It appears that the reviews of high-profile deaths that received media coverage were withheld based on “best interest determinations.”
These cases included:
It is probably not a coincidence that OCFS has elected not to release information on most of the egregious fatalities that were covered in the media. Many of the published state fatality reviews concern deaths due to unsafe sleep factors, accidental drownings, and other fatalities that do not result in criminal charges and are therefore never known to the public. It is possible that OCFS is trying to shield the surviving children in the cases listed above because readers may be able to identify them by putting together the reports and the media coverage—as we did. But these are the very cases for which the information is most urgently needed. The nature of these cases suggests the existence of serious and chronic conditions that might have resulted in previous reports and involvement with CPS. Any harm that public release of the report would cause when the incident has already been covered in the media is dubious.
It’s hard to avoid wondering if the exclusion of these cases from disclosure protects the agency more than the children. And to avoid guessing that Jahmeik’s death will join the list of those cases for which reports are never published.
We cannot make progress in the prevention of severe and life-threatening child maltreatment unless legislators, advocates and the public have access to comprehensive information about what led up to these tragic events. Congress tried to provide this access through a provision in federal legislation, but states have couched this requirement in vague language or hedged it with qualifications that prevent the release of critical information—or any information at all in some cases—as in New York. Only Congress can fix the gaps in the federal law, but state legislatures can act in the meantime to ensure their disclosure laws serve the purpose of improving child welfare in their states.
To learn about current law in your state, see the new report: Keeping the Public in the Dark: How Federal and State Laws and Policies Prevent Meaningful Disclosure about Child Maltreatment Fatalities and Near Fatalities
Professor Sarah Font comments on the withholding of information in this interview with CBS News New York.