PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

Given that the Family Courts do such a poor job of collecting child support through the coercive powers of Civil Contempt, maybe it is time to rethink both the purpose of incarceration and the procedure for determining whether those who are in arrears have "willfully" failed to meet their support obligations. The postings at http://www.writeaprisoner.com/prison-quotes.htm, which have been cut and pasted hereinbelow, provide some thought provoking insights. However, while we cannot say that there is never a reason for, or a benefit of, incarceration, we think that extra precaution should be taken in the Civil Contempt context. If the person who is incarcerated failed behind in his--usually it is a "he"--support obligations, but the act was not willful, then incarceration may only create animosity and delay the payment of what is owed.

After all, a County Jail inmate usually has no way to earn money to apply towards past obligations, much less ongoing obligations. This may be particularly true in Clinch County Georgia and Dorchester County South Carolina where a person can owe more after he has "paid his debt to Society" than he owed before "he paid his debt to Society."

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"There are...recognized rehabilitative benefits to permitting prisoners to...maintain contact with the world outside the prison gates."

--U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken

One final thought. Too much use is made of the prison.

-- Frederick Howard Wines

"More money is put into prison construction than into schools. That, in itself, is the description of a nation bent on suicide. I mean, what's more precious to us than our children? We're going to build a lot more prisons if we don't deal with the schools and their inequalities."

--Jonathan Kozol

"What you do to these men, you do to GOD!"

--Mother Teresa

A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today."

--Albert Camus (1913-60)

There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. He'll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails.

--Mark Twain

“I was in prison, and you came unto me. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

--(Jesus Christ) Matthew 25:36, 40

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

The vilest deeds like poison weeds/Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man/ That wastes and withers there.

--Oscar Wilde

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

--Jerry Brown

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of the government.

--Jean Jacques Rousseau

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

--Bertrand Russell

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.

--Clarence Darrow

In prisons, those things withheld from and denied to the prisoner become precisely what he wants most of all.

--Eldridge Cleaver

Penology...has become torture and foolishness, a waste of money and a cause of crime...a blotting out of sight and heightening of social anxiety.

--Paul Goodman

Better build schoolrooms for "the boy,"
Than cells and gibbets for "the man."

--Eliza Cook

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They keep returning to the same things.

--Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.

--Oscar Wilde

Carelessness about our security is dangerous; carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.

--Adlai Stevenson

Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

--Dag Hammarskjold

In taking revenge, a man is not even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

--Francis Bacon

One of the most important ways you can communicate with an offender is through written correspondence. Encourage your family and friends to write! Even if you are coming to visit soon and have talked on the phone recently, a letter is really appreciated, especially in light of the fact that your contact with an incarcerated loved one is restricted.

--From the State of Missouri Dept. of Corrections Web Site

I hear much of people's calling to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

--Daniel Defoe

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.

--Mark Twain