Forcing Parents to Pick Up Kids' Jail Costs
The Washington Post has an interesting article about state laws that force parents to pay the cost of jail when their kids get incarcerated. In PA, parents have to pay even if the kid is acquitted.
The lawyer, Steven Kaplan — who according to his city contract is paid up to $316,000 a year in salary and bonuses, more than any city employee, including the mayor — is one agent of a deeply entrenched social policy that took root across the country in the 1970s and ’80s. The guiding principle was simple: States, counties and cities believed that parents were shedding responsibility for their delinquent children and expecting the government to pick up the tab.
If parents shared the financial cost of incarceration, this thinking went, they would be more involved in keeping their children out of trouble.
19 states bill parents, and 28 more have the means to do so by state statute. California is bucking the trend: [More...]
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