REFORMING
19 96
Current Awareness
BLOG POST
The Urban Institute is a research organization that publishes unbiased, authoritative insights about the well-being of people and places in the United States. This resource allows you to sort posts by topic, date, author or policy center and search by keywords. Researchers may also subscribe to specific issues that interest them with their name, email, and zip code. In 2016, the Urban Institute wrote a blog post highlighting how child support enforcement policies can hurt black, low-income, noncustodial fathers and negatively impact their children. Moreover, the Urban Institute published this article discussing the way in which low-income noncustodial fathers face multiple employment barriers, including criminal records, lack of a high school education, limited work experience, and poor health.
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization advancing policy solutions for people with low incomes. CLASP is committed to advancing racial equity and fighting against poverty. Once of their website, Researchers can search enter a search term on their blog and filter by content type, issue, or author. During COVID-19, CLASP wrote a blog post stressing how child support should go to children, not states.
NEWS ARTICLES
The Marshall Project is a nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. Researchers can use their search feature, browse by project, or browse by topics such as policing, juvenile justice, death penalty and race. In 2015 The Marshall Project wrote a news posting asking why was Walter Scott running?
The tragic killing of Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina is an on-point illustration of how the child-support system keeps poor noncustodial parents in a cycle of bondage, poverty, and fear. In 2015, Mr. Scott was pulled over by a white police officer for an allegedly broken taillight. Mr. Scott ran, and the officer fatally shot him, eight times in the back. His parents believed that he ran because he feared going back to jail for missed child-support payments. The media focused primarily on race, but news agencies failed to acknowledge how the child-support system can figuratively be as deadly and impossible to outrun as a bullet.
Graves not the only Wrongly Convicted Billed for Child Support
The Houston Chronicle (Chron) is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas. Researchers can search a term and filter by section (business, lifestyle, opinion, etc.) or type (blog, obituary, article, etc.) In 2011, Chron published a news article featuring Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley. Anthony and Clarence are both examples of being freed, but not from bills. Both men were found innocent of capital murder. However, they were billed by state officials for thousands of dollars in child support payments that built up while on death row.
Mother Sues State over Involuntary Servitude
Christal Wood, an out-of-work, single mother attempted to get an internship at a law office but could not because in order to keep her welfare benefits, she had to work at a nonprofit. She sued the state of Washington for violating the 13th Amendment’s involuntary servitude provision and argued that governmental programs keep women dependent and in a cycle of poverty.
LAW REVIEW ARTICLES AND RESEARCH
Deadbeat Dads & Welfare Queens: How Metaphor Shapes Poverty Law
Ann Cammett, Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice, Vol. 34, No. 2, (2014)
This Article argues that the focus on demonizing Black parents in the welfare system has created an obstacle to providing necessary resources to alleviate the suffering of a growing number of poor children of all races, the intended beneficiaries of public assistance.
Daniel L. Hatcher, Wake Forest Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2007
This Article examines the government policy of seeking reimbursement of welfare costs through child support enforcement. It argues that the government's fiscal interests are in direct conflict with the best interests of the children - the controlling legal standard in child support matters.
A New Peonage?: Pay, Work, or Go to Jail in Contemporary Child Support Enforcement and Beyond
Noah D. Zatz, Seattle University Law Review, Vol. 39, 2016
This Article examines peonage, one component of the Jim Crow South’s broader system of racial labor control, which leveraged a racist criminal justice system into an institution of labor subordination. Child support enforcement is one of several contemporary contexts in which the state threatens to incarcerate people if they fail to work. This essay explores whether this practice violates the Thirteenth Amendment’s ban on involuntary servitude.
Who Goes to Jail for Child Support Debt?
In 2018, the Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin published a research brief describing their findings on who is more likely to go to jail for nonpayment of child support. Their study found that two main factors increase the risk to go to jail for unpaid child support. Amount of money owed and noncustodial parents having children by more than one mother. In addition, noncustodial parents are more likely to have a formal child support order and accrue child support debt if the moms have received public assistance and there is conflict in their relationship with the mom.
MAGAZINES
Founded in 1914, The New Republic is a media organization dedicated to addressing today's most critical issues. In 2019, the New Republic published a magazine discussing the Myth of the Welfare Queen. “Welfare Queen” was shorthand for a lazy woman of color, with numerous children she cannot support, who is cheating taxpayers by abusing the system to collect government assistance. Ronald Regan coined the term while campaigning for presidency in 1976. He stated: “In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record. She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans' benefits for four nonexistent deceased veterans’ husbands. Her tax-free cash income, alone, has been running $150,000 a year.”
To be fair, Regan did not invent the woman in Chicago; her name was Linda Taylor and she eventually served time in state prison for welfare fraud, with other possible crimes including murder and kidnapping. However, Regan focused solely on welfare and repeatedly stretched the truth.
DOCUMENTARIES
Rel Dowdell, writer and director of 2017 feature documentary “Where’s Daddy?” sheds light on the hardship’s Black fathers face. For example, Dowdell says, fathers go into court unprepared and without a lawyer because they can’t afford counsel. (“If they could, they probably would have been able to afford child support payments,” he says.)
