Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997
Geovanna Fiallos
Ecuador
CJ 3400
The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), enacted in 1997, provides federal assurance that a child’s safety and permanence remains the principal focus while involved in the child welfare system (Welte). This act was signed by President Bill Clinton in November 1997. The purpose of the ASFA is to emphasize safety for those children who have been removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. But this act is also applied to those children whose mothers have been incarcerated and sentenced to certain time. The primary purpose of this report is to present our own reaction to this matter. I do believe that women somehow are being subject to punishment twice, because they are being sentenced for the crime they have committed, and they are losing their parental rights on their children,
because they are giving them up for adoption because of this Act.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act mandates that reasonable efforts shall not be required when a court has determined that a parent has (a) committed murder or voluntary manslaughter of another child of a parent, (b) attempted to commit murder, (c) committed a felony assault that results in serious bodily injury to the child (Christian). According to the ASFA the child will be removed from his/her home if the parent has been involved in any of the cases presented above. I think through this act many children can have a second chance to have a better future in another homes, because we have to take in consideration that if one of these children’s parents is being incarcerated for a long period, they should not be left alone. Most of these women are single mothers who leave their children with no one to turn to. In those cases I can agree that their children should be placed in a foster home.
Is a woman being punished twice? I certainly believe so, because there are two completely different situations, I agree that they should be punished for the crime that they have committed, but to terminate their parental rights is just not right. Everyone deserves a second chance, and most of the time we do not know the circumstances that made these women to commit such crimes. As I saw in the video “Women in Prison”, I understood that sometimes we misjudge women, because in the video the cases that were presented showed that if they committed their crimes it was because they were trying to defend themselves; they committed murder because of domestic violence. Domestic violence is a crime that should be punished as well, because those women presented in the video killed their husband’s boyfriends, or loved ones because they were victims of their violent behaviors. These women paid not only for their crimes, but they are also suffering because they lost their kids. Every case should be treated differently, and the real circumstances should be closely studied, and if after the proper research, authorities decide that these women will spend a dramatic amount of time of prison, then they can decide what to do with their children, considering first their relatives.
Trying to maintain the family unit is very important to society these days; it is within the boundaries of the families where children and adolescents should develop their personalities, their feelings, and their lives.
References
Child Welfare League of America (16 Jan. 2007). Summary of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. Retrieved 9 Apr. 2007 from http://library.adoption.com/Resources-and- Information/Summary-of-The-Adoption-And-Safe-Families-Act.html.
Christian, S. (Mar. 1999). 1998 State legislative responses to the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. Retrieved April 9, 2007 from http://www.ncsl.org/programs/cyf/asfaslr.htm.
Welte, C. (Sept. 2003). Adoption and Safe Families Act: Has it made a difference? Retrieved April 9, 2007 from http://www.casanet.org/library/adoption/asfa-has-made-a-difference.htm.