We hear so much about preventive healthcare and the need for regular check ups, mammograms and immunizations. Here we have an opportunity to use those same preventive strategies to keep children from unnecessarily experiencing the pain of witnessing a parental arrest. The following are interventions which can be explored to effect change.

Though there are agencies, organizations and advocacy groups that have worked to train and sensitize law enforcement officers to the needs of children in arrest situations (Buffalo, California), this is a daunting and complex task due to the fact that there are more than 800,000 law enforcement officers in the United States across all 50 states. A simpler and possibly more efficient upstream point of intervention may be at the judicial level where there are only 30,000 state judges and 1700 federal judges. Raising awareness of the trauma of witnessing parental arrest in the smaller group, judges, could effect change more quickly and efficiently..

An arrest not carried out by an officer witnessing a crime in real time requires the permission of a judge or magistrate judge.. Law enforcement agents request a judge’s, or grand jury’s, permission to charge an individual with a crime. The judge then demands the apperance of said individual before the court. This can be carried out in two ways, either by issuing an arrest warrant or alternatively a summons.

An arrest warrant is permission for police to arrest an individual day or night, and is enforceable whether or not one refuses to be arrested. An arrest warrant is issued by a judge or magistrate when law enforcement officers have provided sufficient evidence to establish probable cause that a person has committed a crime. This authorizes the police to arrest and detain the individual named in the warrant.

A summons is a court order notifying the defendant that they are being named in a criminal case and listing the date and time that they must appear in court. A summons informs the person that they are required to present themselves in Court, which allows them to coordinate childcare, and as well to avoid having the defendant’s child be exposed to the undue trauma of parental arrest.