FROM a letter to The Wall Street Journal by Em. Prof. Gordon E. Finley of Florida Intl. University, Miami:

In the U.S. today, the only citizens who can be imprisoned for debt are fathers in arrears for child support. The parent-to-prison pathway generally goes something like this: Fall behind in child support, and the state takes away all professional and drivers’ licenses. This makes it impossible for fathers to generate income, and so the arrears increase, the father goes to debtors prison, and with a prison record it becomes exceedingly difficult to impossible to ever get a job in the aboveground economy. The future prospects of the children of imprisoned fathers are uniformly bleak, especially when compounded with the well-established findings that children from single-mother families have the worst developmental outcomes of all family forms.

— Comments —

Bruce writes:

I have an anecdote.

I work for a large defense contractor. One of our defense security guys, one who handles classified information systems, was divorced by his wife. She sued and won a large child support payment even though he doesn’t make a lot of money. The U.S. government revoked his security clearance since he is now seen as being a security risk (debt and large financial burden is seen as a risk when you have a security clearance). So he was terminated because he can’t do his job. Of course, now he can’t pay his child support.

Please follow and like us: