Computer program aimed at predicting child abuse debated
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KIM STRONG, York Daily Record
July 10, 2021
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Critics worry the program is prone to unfairly separate poor and minority children from parents.
When a 4-year-old girl drowned in her swimming pool near Pittsburgh on an August day in 2019, the family was already known to child welfare.
Reports of “lack of supervision” in the home had been called into Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services six times between December 2017 and July 2019, and five of those reports were labeled “unfounded” or “invalid,” according to a state document. The sixth call was investigated, and child welfare was involved with the family when Ca-Niyah Mitchell slipped into the pool without a life vest while her father was inside their house.