Sheriff Posting Pictures of "Deadbeats": Hounding "Deadbroke" Dads Won't Pay

Cook County, IL - Sheriff Tom Dart announced that his department’s website will post photographs of 1,100 “deadbeat” parents who are currently being investigated by his department under the charge that they owe large amounts of child support. In addition, this list of “child support warrants” is placed right under the list of the “criminal warrants” on the Sheriff’s website.

Dart’s announcement is particularly remarkable to me considering that these fathers have not yet been proven guilty and are still under investigation. Each one is entitled to his day in court; that’s what due process and equal protection guarantees everyone. These are basic constitutional safeguards. Yet, these dads will now be convicted in the court of public opinion. Furthermore, it is very questionable that Dart will be collecting much of anything anyway.

These postings have the potential of victimizing innocent fathers. Nationwide these postings are never comprised of well-heeled businessmen, lawyers and accountants, but instead, of fathers who do low-wage and often seasonal work, and owe large sums of money, which they could never hope to pay off. However, the child-support system is largely impervious to the economic realities working people face, such as layoffs, wage cuts, unemployment and work-related injuries. According to the Urban Institute, less than one in 20 noncustodial parents who suffers a substantial drop in income is able to get courts to reduce the support obligation.

According to both the Fatherhood Educational Institute (http://fatherhood-edu.org) and the California Department of Child Support Services, there are four primary factors creating child-support arrearages: “high child-support orders established for low-income obligors”; “a limited number of child-support orders adjusted downward”; “establishment of retroactive child-support orders”; and “accrual interest on child-support debt (9% in Illinois).” Much of the child support arrears is comprised of interest.

It is understandable that government officials may want money spent on welfare benefits to be repaid. Yet, it makes little sense to hound low and no income fathers, particularly since research shows that in some cases, were it not for child support, the men would still be playing a role in their children’s lives. Furthermore, posting photos of accused “deadbeat” parents who have never been found guilty of any crime or found in contempt for non-payment of child support goes too far. It is wrong.