Originally published in Volume 18 of the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy, "Deadbeats, Deadbrokes, and Prisoners" proposes that lawmakers harmonize child well-being rhetoric with policy by mitigating the counterproductive effects of federal and state law on incarcerated parents. Historically, child support policy has targeted absent parents with aggressive enforcement measures. Such an approach is based on an economic resource model that is increasingly irrelevant, even counterproductive, for many low-income families. Specifically, modern day mass incarceration has radically skewed the paradigm on which the child support system is based, removing millions of parents from the formal economy entirely, diminishing their income opportunities after release, and rendering them ineffective economic actors. Such a flawed policy approach creates unintended consequences for the children of these parents by compromising a core non-monetary goal of child support system – parent-child engagement – as enforcement measures serve to alienate parents from the formal economy after reentry and drive them underground and away from their families. In "Deadbeats, Deadbrokes, and Prisoners," Professor Cammett invites readers to reimagine the normative contours of child supportive practices by recognizing that child support alone will never be an effective substitute for broader antipoverty measures.
Professor Cammett joined Boyd's full-time faculty in 2008, bringing expertise in Family Law, Poverty Law, Prisoner Re-entry, and Civil Procedure. At Boyd, Professor Cammett teaches Civil Procedure and serves as Co-Director of the Family Justice Clinic, a live-client clinical program that has a particular focus on the low-income families of prisoners and those affected by the child welfare system and other forms of state intervention. Named Boyd’s 2011 Law Professor of the Year, Professor Cammett is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center (LLM), City University of New York (JD), and the School of Visual Arts (BFA).
