In Florida recently, police pulled up to a young boy playing in the park and asked where his mother lived. According to a report on WPTV, the mom was then arrested for “allowing her son to go to the park alone.” Her son had a cellphone, and she would check in with him along the way. The mom believes “he’s old enough, but Port St. Lucie Police disagree.”

There is a tendency to dismiss stories such as this as a silly mistake by an overzealous police officer, but sadly it’s part of a larger problem. In fact, a similar story of arresting a mom for not supervising her child 24/7/365 took place a few weeks back in South Carolina. A Washington Post column reported these incidents as part of a series on “the increasing criminalization of everything and the use of the criminal justice system to address problems that were once (and better) handled by families, friends, communities and other institutions.”