scholarly journals Public Assistance, Relationship Context, and Jail for Child Support Debt

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 237802311875712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cozzolino
Keyword(s):  
Child Support ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Public Assistance ◽  
Fragile Families ◽  
Nonresident Fathers ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
Formal Support ◽  
Relationship Context ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Support Order

Previous studies of poverty governance have focused on the welfare system, the criminal justice system, and the connections between them. Yet less attention has been paid to a third institution that bridges the gap between these two systems: child support enforcement. Jailing for child support nonpayment is one of many mechanisms of child support enforcement, but little is known about this tactic. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the author examines the process of nonresident fathers’ (1) acquiring a formal support order, (2) accruing child support debt, and (3) being jailed for this debt. The author proposes two pathways into jail for child support nonpayment—public assistance and relationship context—and demonstrates how each pathway affects the risk for jail. Overall, 14 percent of debtors spend time in jail for child support by the time their children are nine years old.

Nonresident Fathers’ Spending on Children: Child Support Payments and Housing Instability

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (9) ◽  
pp. 1470-1497
Author(s):  
Patricia Lewis ◽  
Sabino Kornrich
Keyword(s):  
Child Support ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Informal Support ◽  
Fragile Families ◽  
Housing Instability ◽  
Nonresident Fathers ◽  
Logistic Regression Models ◽  
Formal Support

Previous research finds that fathers’ monetary contributions are associated with housing instability, but it is unclear whether effects are similar across more and less severe types of housing instability. In this research, we investigate how nonresident fathers’ monetary contributions are linked to having skipped rent or mortgage payments, moving in with others (“doubling up”) in the last year, moving residences more than once, or having been evicted or homeless. We use data on a population of at-risk families using the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS) ( n = 1,919). We estimate logistic regression models that control for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. Both formal and informal financial support from fathers was significantly associated with lower mother/child housing instability. Housing instability appears to diminish more rapidly with greater informal support than with greater formal support, but the confidence intervals for these estimates overlap, making them indistinguishable.

scholarly journals Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Surveillance

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.

scholarly journals Walking a High Beam

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason T. Castillo ◽  
Greg W. Welch ◽  
Christian M. Sarver
Keyword(s):  
Father Involvement ◽  
Fragile Families ◽  
Nonresident Fathers ◽  
Flexible Work ◽  
Workplace Flexibility ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Employment Stability ◽  
Work Arrangements ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

Compared with resident fathers, nonresident fathers are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed and less likely, when they are employed, to have access to flexible work arrangements. Although lack of employment stability is associated with lower levels of father involvement, some research shows that increased stability at work without increased flexibility is negatively related to involvement. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study ( N = 895), the authors examined the relationship between nonresident fathers’ employment stability, workplace flexibility, and father involvement. Results indicate that workplace flexibility, but not employment stability, is associated with higher levels of involvement. Policy and practice implications are discussed.

Early Adverse Childhood Experiences and Self-Control Development among Youth in Fragile Families

2021 ◽  
pp. 0044118X2199637
Author(s):  
Melissa S. Jones ◽  
Hayley Pierce ◽  
Constance L. Chapple
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Adverse Childhood Experiences ◽  
Behavioral Outcomes ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Fragile Families ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Considerable Research ◽  
Adverse Childhood ◽  
Using Data

Though considerable research links both a lack of self-control and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to a variety of negative health and behavioral outcomes, few studies to date have explored whether ACEs are associated with deficits in self-control. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW; n = 3,444) and a life course theoretical framework, this study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationships between individual ACEs, cumulative ACEs, timing of ACEs, and durations of early ACEs and self-control development among youth. Our results indicate that as the number of ACEs (by age 5) experienced incrementally increases, the likelihood of reported self-control decreases. Moreover, when it comes to the timing and duration of ACE exposure, ACEs that are high but late, intermittent, or chronically high significantly decrease self-control. Based on our findings, researchers should continue to explore the role of ACEs in youth self-control development.

scholarly journals Uneasy partnerships: Prisoner re-entry, family problems and state coercion in the era of neoliberalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 146247452110061
Author(s):  
Leonidas K Cheliotis ◽  
Tasseli McKay
Keyword(s):  
Child Support ◽  
Family Study ◽  
Child Protective Services ◽  
Protective Services ◽  
Parental Violence ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
Former Prisoners ◽  
State Coercion ◽  
Coercive Intervention

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are released from prison every year. Drawing on interviews conducted in the mid-2010s in the context of the Multi-site Family Study on Parenting, Partnering and Incarceration, this article explores how the strains of prisoner re-entry interact with those of poverty and family life, and how these combined strains condition proactive engagement with the legal system among re-entering individuals and their intimate and co-parenting partners. We focus our analysis on problems, tensions and struggles for control in parenting and partnership, including inter-parental violence, as these often led to calls or actions that clearly allowed for coercive intervention by parole authorities, courts, child support enforcement, or child protective services. We identify the precise circumstances and motives that lay behind such requests or allowances, and explain how these related to the cynical regard in which former prisoners and their partners typically held the coercive apparatus of the state. Through bringing our empirical findings into an interplay with scholarship on the role of punishment in the governance of poverty under neoliberalism, we examine how the strains faced by former prisoners' households and the tactics they used to deal with them pertain to broader politico-economic arrangements.

Layers of Bias: A Unified Approach for Understanding Problems With Risk Assessment

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurel Eckhouse ◽  
Kristian Lum ◽  
Cynthia Conti-Cook ◽  
Julie Ciccolini
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Quantitative Risk Assessment ◽  
Risk Scores ◽  
Risk Models ◽  
Risk Assessment Models ◽  
Final Layer ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Using Data

Scholars in several fields, including quantitative methodologists, legal scholars, and theoretically oriented criminologists, have launched robust debates about the fairness of quantitative risk assessment. As the Supreme Court considers addressing constitutional questions on the issue, we propose a framework for understanding the relationships among these debates: layers of bias. In the top layer, we identify challenges to fairness within the risk-assessment models themselves. We explain types of statistical fairness and the tradeoffs between them. The second layer covers biases embedded in data. Using data from a racially biased criminal justice system can lead to unmeasurable biases in both risk scores and outcome measures. The final layer engages conceptual problems with risk models: Is it fair to make criminal justice decisions about individuals based on groups? We show that each layer depends on the layers below it: Without assurances about the foundational layers, the fairness of the top layers is irrelevant.

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