Bringing Up Fathers

Los Angeles County has lost more ground in the battle to collect child support payments from delinquent fathers by failing to join six other counties in a massive amnesty and education program. The county district attorney’s office is in the process of arresting 400 fathers with outstanding warrants and has mailed 24,000 warning letters, but more than 250,000 county fathers owe child support. This county needs to adopt a policy on child support collection that is more effective than its annual Father’s Day roundup. An amnesty program is one option.

The purpose of the child support law is to make sure that money owed to mothers and children gets into their hands. Law enforcement officials and the general public have assumed that the threat of prosecution would be enough to make absent fathers pay, but that has not been the case. California fathers owe $850 million in child support, and very few of those fathers are in jail. One-shot mass arrests set an example, but they do not fill the child support coffers. Seeing to it that families get their money is more important than putting fathers in jail. The experimental two-month amnesty program that begins today in Orange, Riverside, Ventura, Kern, Santa Cruz and Sacramento counties uses television and radio spots, billboards, posters and bumper stickers to urge fathers to come forward and pay their outstanding child support balances in return for freedom from civil or criminal prosecution. Mass arrests of those who have not paid will come at the end of the period.

This combination of education through public service announcements and a much better publicized threat of prosecution has the potential to reach many more delinquent fathers in Los Angeles County and have a greater impact on them than does the district attorney’s current operation. Any concept that may help determine a long-term solution of the child support crisis warrants experimental application. California’s State Franchise Tax Amnesty Plan earlier this year netted $160 million in payments by Californians who owed state taxes. Amnesty in the case of child support might meet with similar success.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner demonstrated an increased commitment to enforcing the child support law by intensifying this year’s Father’s Day roundup, but he has rejected the amnesty plan. He maintains that an amnesty program is “impracticable” in his county, but district attorneys in six other large counties had no problems creating an amnesty period at the state’s request. If the trial amnesty program works, Reiner should reconsider his position. Whether it works or not, state health and welfare officials and district attorneys must keep working together toward finding the most effective way of making fathers pay child support on a regular basis.