Intake staff should seek to identify all personal debts owed by an individual admitted to the facility, including child and spousal support, court fines and fees, incarceration or supervision fees, and restitution. Gathering this information enables corrections staff to facilitate the development of a reasonable payment plan for the period of incarceration and for after the individual's release.

When parents go to prison, their families' financial needs do not diminish, and incarcerated parents remain legally responsible for complying with their child support orders. Yet, most inmates have little or no ability to meet their child support obligations. ^[1]   On average, incarcerated parents owe more than $20,000 when they are released from prison. ^[2]   Unless suspended or reduced during incarceration, accumulated child support debt can undermine parents' efforts to retain regular employment and interfere with family reunification. ^[3]  

Parents with open child support cases should be identified during or near intake, and to the extent possible, should be encouraged to initiate the process to update their support orders. The state child support agency and corrections department should work collaboratively to develop a program that ultimately (1) ensures that incarcerated parents understand their rights and responsibilities related to their children, (2) facilitates the suspension or modification of the child support obligation during the period of incarceration, and (3) encourages the regular payment of support upon release. In addition, state child support agencies should increase the accessibility and timeliness of their standard review and adjustment process. ^[4]  

Example: Child support modification process, Massachusetts Department of Corrections

In Massachusetts, a child support employee works full time at the state's main intake facility for male prisoners. This individual makes weekly presentations to and meets individually with new inmates who are found through automated data match to have child support cases. The child support agency assists incarcerated fathers in requesting modification of their support orders and encourages them to work with the child support agency after release. The agency files the modification requests with the court and serves the custodial guardian with a copy of the request. If the person in prison has more than one year left on his or her sentence, the request is scheduled for hearing during the period of incarceration, with the affidavit serving as his or her testimony. If the inmate has less than a year left on the sentence, the agency does not schedule a court hearing until after the person is released and contacts the agency independently. At the hearing, the agency recommends to the court that the order be adjusted to a below-guidelines amount of $50 per month during incarceration and to reflect the parent's anticipated postrelease ability to pay support. The court can modify the order back to the date the modification request was served on the custodial guardian.

To the extent that no mechanism is in place for suspending payments quickly or automatically at the time of intake, corrections administrators should document the child support obligation, and the individual in prison or jail should receive further counseling on managing his or her child support payments and participating in child support proceedings as soon as his or her programming begins. (See Policy Statement 13, Children and Families, for more on how corrections can work with inmates to educate them on child support responsibilities and to help them manage their child support cases during incarceration.)

As part of the intake process, inmates should also be assessed for family violence (see Recommendation m, below), and child support cases should be flagged with a family violence computer indicator when appropriate. In a Massachusetts study, more than half of the child support cases of incarcerated parents had been flagged for domestic violence. ^[5]