
Skip Child Support. Go to Jail. Lose Job. Repeat - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/us/skip-child-support-go-to-jail-lose-job-repeat.html?_r=0
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AdmiralAsshat
I was thinking, "Why not just garnish his salary?" until I read this:

 _When parents fall short, the authorities escalate collection efforts,
withholding up to 65 percent of a paycheck, seizing bank deposits and tax
refunds, suspending driver’s licenses and professional licenses, and then
imposing jail time._

I don't see how this is legal. If they've seized 65% of your paycheck already
and it's still not enough, isn't this basically amounting to debtors' prison?

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spdustin
Because when it comes to child support, you've been ordered by a judge to pay.
Violating a court order is a criminal offense.

There are other ways to manage overburdening debt collections, even court-
ordered ones. The situation escalating to incarceration is largely avoidable.

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geebee
This is interesting. Could you explain how it is avoidable? I am genuinely
asking, not looking for something to argue about (I may disagree, just want to
make sure you know I'm not looking for something to disagree with, I am asking
this because I really don't know).

My limited understanding is that people can be sent to jail for failure to pay
even if they have turned over all existing assets (i.e., no concealing assets
or fraud) and have made no effort to evade payment. For instance, if someone
"loses" a job and the judge believes that the person is not making a
sufficient effort to find one and resume payment, that can be sufficient to
send someone to jail. Is that the case?

~~~
Canada
My understanding is that effort is irrelevant. Either the man pays or is
imprisoned. I wonder how much of these debts not money paid by the state to
the monther, but are fines or penalties that generate revenue for the state
itself.

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Someone1234
I legitimately don't understand America's obsession with sending so many
people to jail.

If you fail to pay child support here, all they do is just garnish your wages
both for payment and also for repayment of missed child support.

The employee actually never "sees" the money as it is taking directly from the
employer.

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DanBC
Here's a BBC radio four programme that talks about some tiny cities in
Missouri, and how they raise money from minor traffic violations, and how many
people either can't pay the accumulating fines or can't get time off work for
the court case and thus a bunch of people end up in prison.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pqskm)

> Are excessive traffic fines and debtors' jails fuelling community tensions
> in suburban Missouri? Claire Bolderson reports on a network of ninety
> separate cities in St Louis County, most of which have their own courts and
> police forces. Critics say that their size makes them financially unviable
> and allege that some of them boost their incomes by fining their own
> citizens and locking them up when they can't pay.

> This edition of Crossing Continents goes out and about in St Louis County to
> meet the people who say they are victims of a system which sees arrest
> warrants issued for relatively minor misdemeanours. Many of the victims are
> poor and black. The programme also takes us into the courts, and out onto
> the freeways with some of the County's police, who say they are upholding
> the law and promoting road safety.

> The US government is not so sure. One of the towns in question is Ferguson
> where riots erupted after a white police officer shot a young black man dead
> last summer. In a recent report on the riots, the Department of Justice
> concluded that the Ferguson police had been stopping people for no good
> reason. It said they were putting revenue before public safety.

> Claire Bolderson investigates how widespread the practice is and considers
> the impact on relations between citizens and the authorities that govern
> them.

It's weird. The consequence for driving at twelve MPH over the speed limit
shouldn't be prison (unless you're drunk, or by a school, or some kind of
speeding unrepentant criminal).

("Crossing Continents" is a generally good, interesting programme and it's
well worth listening to it.)

