Week 12 Post 1 Not a Crime to Be Poor

Not a Crime to Be Poor By Peter Edelman
Section 5- Child Support: Criminalizing Poor Fathers

• Child support payments in 14 states do not pause for incarceration 
• Urban Institute studied 9 states in 2007, finding 70% of child support debt was owed by people with incomes of less than $10,000 
• Many states obligation to pay assumes father has a full-minimum wage or in some cases median wage job,  result of this was some low income fathers being expected to pay an average of 83% of their income for child support 
• https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/10/18/for-men-in-prison-child-support-becomes-a-crushing-debt
• 2009 survey in SC showed one out of every 8 inmates in the state was there because he could not pay child support
• 2010 in Georgia 3,500 parents filed for nonpayment of child support (among one of the 14 states that do no allow pause in rising debt as a father is in prison - SC and MO are too) 
• One in nine African-American children have a parent in prison, and one in 28 for the country as a whole