By Meghan McCann

There are approximately 1.5 million people in prison in the United States. More than 50 percent of those people have a child under the age of 18. These incarcerated parents make up about 5 percent of the child support caseload.

Given these numbers, states continue to grapple with how to balance the need to enforce child support and provide for children with the potentially damaging consequences that incarceration can have on parents and their children.

That is why NCSL’s Child Support Project will be hosting a session at NCSL’s Legislative Summit in Seattle called Child Support and Incarceration. This session will focus on what we know about the current prison population, the intersection between incarceration and child support, and two programs currently operating in Washington state to help potentially incarcerated, incarcerated or formerly incarcerated parents support their children.

Check out NCSL’s Child Support Digest, Volume 3, No. 2 for more on the Legislative Summit, the Child Support and Incarceration session and other NCSL and national resources related to child support.

Meghan McCann is a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Children and Families Program. She works primarily on child support, child welfare and family law policy.

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