In the neoliberal turn, the United States advanced all manner of punitive approaches to solving social problems and meeting human needs, from child welfare and school attendance to illicit drug use and street crime. Acclaimed sociologist and legal theorist Dorothy Roberts contends that these policies have built a carceral web, especially around Black and Indigenous communities, that punishes families most harmed by social inequality. If we want to support families instead of tearing them apart, she argues that we need a radically innovative approach. We need to replace America’s carceral web with webs of community and care.

Dorothy Roberts is an endowed professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. A specialist on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare, she is the author of more than 100 articles and five books, including her latest, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World. Roberts is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine.