County pressures parents to pay up

A get-tough initiative targeting Spokane-area parents who fail to make child-support payments will be launched this week, putting even greater pressure on an already crowded county jail.

Starting today, dads and moms will get a reminder from the Spokane County prosecutor’s office about the consequences of continuing to fail to pay child support, family law prosecutor Dawn Cortez said. If they ignore the reminder and fail to start making payments, sheriff’s deputies will arrest them.

“We are focusing on cases where we think we have a good location on where they live or hang out,” Cortez said. “If you come forward, we won’t arrest you. We will make arrangements to get you back on track for making payments.”

However, the initiative, which will run though Sept. 18, is not a true amnesty program. Even those parents who make back payments still will have active warrants for their arrest, Cortez said.

County Prosecuting Attorney Steve Tucker said the initiative is “basically just an attempt to remind people that if they are not paying child support, … they can do jail time.”

The crackdown is the second get-tough county initiative threatening scofflaws with jail time that has been unveiled recently despite warnings that the county’s lockup facilities are mostly full. Sheriff Mark Sterk announced a crackdown last week on felons failing to pay court-ordered restitution.

Some of those felons already have agreed to pay the full amount they owe or have worked out a payment plan with county Clerk Thomas Fallquist. But some have returned to the Spokane County Jail, jail commander Capt. Jerry Brady said.

“I would think those people won’t be here a great deal of time. For the most part, they are not bad people,” Brady said. “They are just people who, for whatever reason, haven’t taken care of their obligations.”

Many of the parents are fathers and mothers who owe between $10,000 and $40,000 in court-ordered child support, Cortez said. “I think we have a case that is over $100,000,” she said.

“We never know how many people will be arrested. Two years ago, a number of people were arrested,” she said.

“What’s important is that we get a number of people to come in ahead of time, which saves us the resources of going out and getting them. And it gets money to children.”

Brady said the county jail has averaged more than 600 inmates per day.

“We are most of the time running over critical, which is 630. During those times, we book only certain classes of crimes,” he said. “If we are below 600, we try to take anything.”

Brady said he expects the parent initiative to bring more business to the jail.

“Anytime anyone says, ‘You will do this’ or ‘You will do that,’ it always ups the pressure,” Brady said. “But when you are given an order, you find a way to make it work.”

Sterk, who announced last week his resignation effective March 31, said the one major goal he will not accomplish is building a new jail.

Brady said something needs to be done soon.

“We will do everything we can to accommodate them,” Brady said of any arrested parents. “But the criminal justice system, from top to bottom, is in a crisis mode. It’s imperative that people start thinking about how you are going to build new jails, how you are going to fund them and what you will do with the old ones.”