In an attempt to shore up support among black male voters, Kamala Harris proposed small-business loans and training programs aimed at steering them toward “high-paying jobs.” Whatever the virtues of her plans, they overlook a real-world situation facing millions of black men: the combination of a prison record and daunting child-support payments they had no way of paying during years behind bars.
One-third of black men are estimated to have at least one felony conviction. Whether one attributes this primarily to racism or dysfunctional culture, the practical question is how to help these men enter the legal workforce and lawfully support themselves, their children and the mothers of those children.
The most conventionally discussed barriers to successful “re-entry” are well-known, including occupational licensing laws and employer screening practices that disqualify ex-offenders from many jobs. But as the National Institute of Justice has reported, “one of the biggest obstacles to reentry is the size of a parent’s child support debt, which averages $20,000 to $36,000, depending on the state and the data used.” During work for the Manhattan Institute with the City of Newark’s Office of Reentry, I met a father of four without prospects of work and with child-support arrearages of more than $45,000. He made clear that returning to the heroin trade was an option.
