Charging Poor Parents for Lawbreaking Children
Celeste Fremon

Martin Berg at the LA Daily Journal wrote a very good column about the unconscionable idiocy that is going on at the LA County Department of Probation. Since the Daily Journal is hidden behind a firewall, I’ve reprinted the whole thing below.
But first, a little back story.
Until this past February 13—three weeks ago—the LA’s Department of Probation was charging families of lawbreaking kids for their children and/or teenager’s stays in juvenile hall or probation camp—as much as $23.63 dollars for each day in juvie ($750 each month), and $11.94 for each day they spent in camp.
Cool, the hard core among you might be saying. Let’s hold parents responsible for the misdeeds of their offspring.
Yes, well. The one teensy problem about this swell notion is that the majoriy of the parents charged were poor or working class with nothing to spare, so for many, the fees were either deeply burdonsome, or not affordable at all.
Supposedly the parents who couldn’t afford what usually amounted to thousands of dollars in bills could appeal the charges. But for some reason the appeals rarely seemed to work.
As a result, working single mothers were having their wages garnished, families were losing homes or on the verge of doing so, a homeless mother got billed while in a shelter, grandparents on fixed incomes who had taken in children out of love and kindness, were being hounded for high payments.
Moreover probation was spending an astonishing amount of money hiring people to chase after slow-paying parents (and grandparents, and foster parents).
Around a year ago, the Youth Justice Coalition began hearing the fees-for-kid-lock-up horror stories and looked into the matter. What they found was worse than they had imagined. So, together with some other nonprofits like Human Rights Watch, YJC’s Kim McGill went to see Probation Chief Robert Taylor to find out if he would set things right.
Gosh! Bummer! Nothing I can do, said Taylor. ( Or words to that effect.)
(A SIDE NOTE: Since Probation Officer Mary Ridgway’s death I’ve happened to talk to a lot of POs who’ve told me they uniformly hate this parent dunning policy. Just so you know, the rank-and-file should in no way be held responsible for management’s utter stupidity.)
After failing with Taylor, YJC and company next contacted a very, very talented reporter at the LA Times named Molly Hennessy-Fiske, who started looking into the issue. A series of excellent articles resulted, which may be found here and here and here.
With the entrance of the Times on the scene, all of a sudden Chief Taylor found— Mon Dieu! Quelle surprise!—-he could do something after all—especially after the YJC also went to the County Board of Supervisors, who forced Probation’s hand.
Thus on February 13, Chief Taylor declared a moratorium on the payments until things could be sorted out.
Only one problem: a lot of people didn’t know about the moratorium because Probation didn’t bother to tell them. They just kept asking for the back money.
Which brings us to our story. Take it away, Marty.
EARTH TO L.A. COUNTY: GET A CLUE
Leave it to Los Angeles County bureaucrats to turn a well-intentioned state law holding parents financially accountable for their kids’ bad deeds into a vicious attack on beleaguered foster parents.
Vicious, and really stupid.
Vicious because county lawyers have gone after people they should have known didn’t have the ability to pay, sometimes putting liens on their homes when parents couldn’t come up with the money.
Stupid because the county lawyers throw good money after bad, in one case paying an outside law firm $13,000 to try to collect $1,000 from a grandmother who became guardian of her daughter’s four children – even after the county Board of Supervisors had declared a moratorium on the collections.
Posted in Los Angeles County, juvenile justice |
6 Comments »








