Rethinking public policy toward low-income fathers in the child support program

Get to Work or Go to Jail: State Violence and the Racialized Production of Precarious Work

“…With work effort front and center, familiar issues from welfare-to-work reemerge, including disagreements about the causes of un(der)employment and disputes over voluntary versus mandatory employment services (Sorensen 2010;Mead 2010). Race persistently influences these domains (Brito, Pate, and Wong 2015), affecting the services offered, the work deemed "good enough," the value of caretaking that competes for time with paid work, and whether noncompliance is excusable or merits sanction (Bonds 2006;Roberts 1994;Soss, Fording, and Schram 2011).…”

“…Travis 2005;Simon 1993, 263) and then child support enforcement. As with welfare reform, many liberals may agree, leaving policy disputes confined to the familiar balance between punitive "hassle" designed to lower expectations and supportive "help" designed to increase the returns to work (Mead 2010;Sorensen 2010). Underlying this agreement is the widespread view that employment is a foundation of personal and community flourishing (Wilson 1996), specifically including avoidance of future criminal legal system 11.…”

Working to Avoid Incarceration: Jail Threat and Labor Market Outcomes for Noncustodial Fathers Facing Child Support Enforcement

“…A typical statute in Illinois provides that when any obligor is unemployed, "the court may order the person to seek employment and report periodically to the court with a diary, listing or other memorandum of his or her efforts in accordance with such order." 4 Further institutionalizing such requirements has been widely discussed (Sorensen 2010), and it was a priority of the Obama administration (Turetsky 2012).…”

“…Studying these incarceration-backed work requirements bears directly on policy interest in using criminal justice and child support institutions to target work programs toward men (Mead 2007;Sorensen 2010), complementing welfare-to-work programs for custodial parents (primarily women). This interest overlaps with using work programs as an alternative to incarceration for child support nonpayment (Turetsky 2012), as with criminal legal debt.…”

“…Analysis of child support work programs has emphasized how services can enhance job finding and retention (Sorensen 2010), not whether the enforcement threat changes responses to constant work opportunities. The literature on welfare-to-work, however, suggests that its employment efects arose in part from making welfare receipt less attractive, not increasing the returns to work, leading participants to exit welfare sooner and for lower earnings (Cancian et al 2002).…”