Judge Kaye opened her Remarks at the Harvard conference with a compelling context of grim, wrenching data on child poverty, criminal justice for young blacks and foster care:

Poverty

• We know that a child is born into poverty in the U.S. every 36 seconds and we see 12.8 million children (18%) living below the poverty line - and I should add that the $20,000 poverty level for a family of four is itself only half of what a family requires to satisfy basic needs.
• We see 28.4 million children (39%) living in families below that $40,000 basic income level, a percentage on the rise after a decade of decline, and we see a tripling in the numbers of children living in particularly fragile, fatherless homes.
• We see 15.7 million children (21% of U.S. children) living in immigrant families, with their parents' employment difficulties and linguistic isolation placing extra stresses on their abilities to reach that American dream.
• We see an estimated 8.5 million children, nearly 12% of U.S. children, without health insurance, notwithstanding progress made in expanding child health insurance programs.

Criminal Justice

• We see that one in three black males born today can expect to go to prison if current trends continue, and one in eight black males in their 20s today are actually in prison or jail on any given day and in some cities more than 50% are under the supervision of the criminal justice system.
• We see more than 2 million people in the U.S. prison system, more than 40% of them black, close to 10 times the incarceration rate of countries such as England, Italy, France and Germany - a "cradle-to-prison pipeline," to use the Children's Defense Fund's phrase, that must be interrupted.
• We know that we can look at a child's ZIP code almost at birth and predict the future path of that child.

Foster Care

• We see more than half a million children in foster care nationally, most there to watch at least two of their birthdays pass, half of them over the age of 10, and each month we see 2000 children age out of the system with no permanent family, many left to the ravages of homelessness and crime, some even to violent deaths.
• We know that within four years, about 84% of these foster care graduates will themselves have become parents, only about half in possession of a high school diploma, half will be unemployed, close to a third will be on public assistance and one quarter will have been homeless at some point.
• We see approximately 126,000 children who cannot return home and await adoption - and while our national adoption day organizers tell us that less than 1% of the U.S. population would suffice to meet their needs for permanent homes, we all know the many U.S. citizens who instead venture abroad to adopt.
• We know from research of Dr. Cathy Widom and others that they are significantly more likely to be arrested as juveniles (27 % as compared to 17%), more likely to be arrested as adults (42%, as compared to 33%) and more likely to be arrested for violent crimes (18%, as compared with 14%), when measured against a comparable non-maltreated control group.
• We know from the Children's Defense Fund that a child dies from neglect or abuse every six hours, and a child is killed by gunfire almost every three hours (almost eight per day).