PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

August 24, 2008

OH: Bill would free more deadbeat parents. Kids, state would all be winners, legislator says. Bill would free more deadbeat parents. Kids, state would all be winners, legislator says

Friday, August 22, 2008 3:10 AM
By Jim Siegel

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Hoping to see more deadbeat parents placed in community-corrections programs instead of costly, crowded prisons, a state legislator from Franklin County proposed yesterday expanding a pilot sentencing program.

The bill would take a program that started in 2007 in Franklin, Delaware and five other counties and spread it statewide. State prison officials estimate that keeping those who fail to pay child support out of their penitentiaries would save an estimated $13,000 a year per offender and increase support payments by 71 percent.

"The state can save money on the cost of keeping them in prison, and (offenders) can earn money to pay back the child support," said Rep. Ted Celeste, D-Grandview Heights, who introduced the bill. "To me, it seems like a no-brainer."

Punishing deadbeat parents has long been an uncomfortable balancing act for the judicial system, as it weighs the desire to punish those who ignore court orders against the fact that an inmate can't earn money to make support payments.

Those who end up in prison are usually the repeat offenders, after judges decide they've had enough, said Linda Janes, a 17-year veteran of the state prison system and deputy director of the Division of Parole and Community Services.

Of the record 50,633 inmates in Ohio prisons this week, nearly 800 are locked up for failure to pay child support, Janes said. Based on the pilot program, which has diverted 650 people who could have be sent to prison, she estimated that 1,800 to 2,000 could be kept out of prison each year if the program went statewide.

Nonsupport offenders generally serve six- to eight-month prison sentences.
"We certainly can punish these people and rehabilitate these people in the community without spending the vast dollars it takes to incarcerate somebody," Janes said.

Celeste said he thinks the bill can be passed in the lame-duck session after the November election, possibly as an amendment to House Bill 130, which is designed to help prisoners re-enter society. The House has passed that bill.