{"product_id":"wards-of-the-state","title":"Wards of the State","description":"\u003cb\u003eTold through the stories of eight former foster youth, a jolting exploration of a broken system from an award-winning journalist\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Through the stories of eight former foster kids, Claudia Rowe illustrates exactly where, when, and how the system is failing the children that it parents. With accounts from psychologists to advocates to judges to the former foster children themselves, \u003ci\u003eWards of the State \u003c\/i\u003epaves a road to reform by pulling back the curtain on the heartbreaking realities faced by children in a system that fails its most vulnerable youth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e By the time Maryanne was 19 years old, she was on trial for murder. After having been in and out of the foster homes for nearly a decade, she was trafficked and assaulted, and ultimately pointed a gun at her assailant—and pulled the trigger. She fled, but with no family and no real friends, it didn’t take long for the police to catch up with her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In court, the defense blamed not the traffickers, nor Maryanne, but the state itself—or rather, the foster care system, which turns the state into the parent of hundreds of thousands of children. The state of Washington didn’t listen, but Claudia Rowe did.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWards of the State\u003c\/i\u003e by journalist and author Claudia Rowe widens an eye-opening case from a true-crime lens to an exploration of the foster care-to-prison pipeline. The system is broken––hundreds of thousands of children every year leave America’s $30 billion dollar foster care system and enter its prisons, where in some cases, 75 percent of inmates are former foster kids.","brand":"ABRAMS","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42664924217380,"sku":"9781419763151","price":44.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0725\/9734\/0196\/files\/9781419763151.jpg?v=1778616927","url":"https:\/\/thamesandhudson.com.au\/products\/wards-of-the-state","provider":"Thames \u0026 Hudson Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}