Wards of the State Audiobook By Claudia Rowe cover art

Wards of the State

The Long Shadow of American Foster Care

Pre-order: Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Wards of the State

By: Claudia Rowe
Pre-order: Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $24.49

Pre-order for $24.49

Confirm pre-order
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Told through the stories of eight former foster youth, a jolting exploration of a broken system from an award-winning journalist

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, 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. However, 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.

Wards of the State 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. Through the stories of eight former foster kids, Rowe illustrates exactly where, when, and how the system is failing the children that it parents. With accounts from psychologists to advocates to court room judges to the former foster children themselves, Wards of the State paves 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.

©2025 Claudia Rowe (P)2025 Recorded Books
Adoption & Fostering Criminology Human Rights Relationships Social
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Wards of the State

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.