By Brittany Pearl Battle, Spring 2021 Contexts
On April 4, 2015, Walter Scott was shot and killed while running away from a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, after being stopped for a broken taillight. As a video of the shooting recorded by a bystander circulated, national conversations began and it came to light that Scott had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to pay child support. His family claimed the warrant was likely what made him run as he was unarmed and involved in only a routine traffic stop. Scott had previously been incarcerated for non-payment on three separate occasions. This case illuminates a major issue—the use of excessively punitive surveillance and enforcement mechanisms—in the child support system, one of the biggest federal programs in the U.S. dealing with issues related to childhood poverty.
Scott was not alone in his fear of being sent to jail for child support debt. While there are no reliable national statistics on how many non-custodial parents are incarcerated for nonpayment in the U.S. (one Congressional Research Service report estimates the figure at around 50,000 persons incarcerated daily in jails and prisons as a result of non-payment of support), in a 2009 study, University of South Carolina law professor, Elizabeth Patterson, found that one out of every eight inmates incarcerated in 33 county jails in South Carolina were being held on contempt of court charges resulting from non-payment. These figures may hold true throughout other jurisdictions. This reality that parents face incarceration for falling behind on their child support payments impacts how these individuals engage with their kids and live their daily lives.
With reports last spring that non-custodial parents with child support arrearages were not eligible for the Coronavirus relief payment passed by Congress, the far-reaching consequences of child support policy and enforcement once again made headlines. The U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent reports state that there are 5.4 million custodial parents with formal child support orders in the system, which serves more than one in four children in the U.S. These orders control the ways that non-custodial parents (fathers in particular as mothers account for 80 percent of custodial parents) provide for their children financially. Still, involvement with the system also directly affects many aspects of an individual’s life, beyond just their finances, including how they view their identities as parents and individuals. Moreover, these influences on, or in many cases, threats to, fathers’ identities impact how they relate to their children. Ultimately, the child support system represents a significant state intervention in the family that often causes more strain rather than achieving its stated goals of encouraging “responsible parenting” and supporting financial “self-sufficiency”—a strain which in many instances interferes with fathers’ abilities to maintain strong relationships with their children.
To explore parents’ experiences in the child support system, I conducted observations in several Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts in Central Virginia, in addition to other sites related to child support enforcement, including the Division of Child Support Enforcement office, as well as alternative-to-incarceration and reentry programs. Much of what we know about parents’ experiences in this system comes from interviews and large national data sets, so my goal was to get a sense of what was actually happening on the ground in the courtrooms where these orders are determined and where social interactions between parents and child support system personnel are taking place. In all, I observed more than 300 hearings and more than 75 hours in the other related sites. In addition, I conducted 50 formal and informal interviews with parents and personnel involved in the system. I reviewed text and other materials produced by and about the system, including legislation, informational materials provided by social service agencies, political rhetoric, and news coverage. While I made every effort to note the exact phrasing used by participants during informal interviews and in my observations, I recognize that because the conversations were not recorded, I may be paraphrasing some portions. For that reason, when I report dialogue that took place during my observations or informal conversations, I make note when the quotes might be non-verbatim using “paraphrased from field notes.” I use pseudonyms for all names to protect the identity of participants. This fieldwork, completed over an 18-month period in 2015-2016, revealed the far-reaching implications of this system of state intervention grounded in neoliberal and carceral-oriented ideas about parenthood and family.
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