New Report Highlights Charging Parents For Child's Jail Time Even When Innocent

One of the many dreadful legacies of the incarceration state that was caused by lead poisoning is charging parents for the time their children spend behind bars. Note that I did not say for the crimes they commit but for simply spending time in jail. At least twenty states or localities within those states charge parents for time their children spend in jail.

States adopted the preposterous idea of charging the parents for their children’s interaction with law enforcement during the crime spike from the 1970s to the 1990s. It was yet another example of “tough love” because there was a belief that parents were largely abandoning their unruly and out of control children to the criminal justice system. The idea was that making parents pay for incarceration would somehow make them more “responsible”. Of course the fact that the parents probably most effected were also the ones least able to pay would somehow make them even more “responsible” parents. The attitude of the state was encapsulated by the guy who was a collector for the program in Philadelphia who said, “I mean, do we think the taxpayers should be supporting these bad kids”. Apparently his idea of “supporting” is holding them in a jail cell.

Now you might, just might, be able to understand that point of view if the child was actually convicted of a crime. But that is not a requirement in order to get billed as a parent. A most egregious example comes from California where, according to the Marshall Project, “When Mariana Cuevas’s son was released from a California jail, after being locked up in a juvenile hall for more than 300 days for a homicide he did not commit, the boy’s public defender, Jeffrey Landau, thought his work was done. The case had been dismissed; his client was free. But at a celebratory dinner afterward, Cuevas, a Bay Area home cleaner, pulled out a plastic bag full of bills and showed Landau that the state had tried to collect nearly $10,000 for her child’s imprisonment. She had been able to pay back only about $50 a month. ‘Sure, your son was stolen from you for a year,’ said Landau, stunned, ‘but here’s what it cost.'” I wonder over the years how many kids were charged as adults but billed as minors.

Needless to say, many poorer families can not afford these kinds of bills. Again according to the report, “When parents fail to pay on time, the state can send collection agencies after them, tack on interest, garnish 50 percent of their wages, seize their bank accounts, intercept their tax refunds, suspend their driver’s licenses or charge them with contempt of court.” In some cases, these bills have forced families to sell their homes and driven them into bankruptcy.

Thankfully, exposure of this heinous practice is forcing some states and localities to rethink the program. But there are always those who resist change, especially when it comes to keep the poor and minorities down. The head of Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice said, “It increases buy-in. It keeps the parents’ skin in the game.” He also added that his department needed the funding the program provides, which, I have a feeling, is far more important than keeping “parents’ skin in the game”. (I think we should all know by now that when government tells you that you need to have “skin in the game”, you are going to get ripped off). The appropriate counterpoint to this facile argument was made pretty succinctly by one parent. “I pay taxes every single year — isn’t that supposed to be what pays for the justice system?”

At some point about 30 years ago, the criminal justice system returned to its Jim Crow roots and began to once again become a profit center for local and state governments. Maybe it had never left. And the concept of innocent until proved guilty also went out the window. Now police can seize your property without even charging you with a crime and bill you for jail time for your child even when the child was completely innocent. And that is the real crime.