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This is a matter that needs attention immediatly. Thousands of americans are having their freedom stripped away by the "CHILD ENFORCEMENT AGENCY?"

The child support enforcement laws that have been enacted in the past few years are unfair to non-custodial parents. A primary difficulty with these laws is their inflexibility. Due to any number of circumstances, non-custodial parents may find their earnings decreased due to a lay-off, injury, illness, or many other reasons. But the mechanism for modification of support orders is very slow to respond. In fact, as is often the case, NCP's are faced with huge arrears due to their inability to make full payment of child support for months at a time. Once there is an arrear, it can not, by law, be modified. This is clearly unjust. Under current law, NCP's who fall behind in their court ordered child support payments can be judged criminals, even felons, and imprisoned.

If NCP's fall behind in the court ordered support payment, they can lose their drivers license, in addition to their professional license to conduct business and they can also be denied a passport.

Measures to extract the maximum possible amount of money from non-custodial parents have become increasingly extreme, and often violate the basic principles of human dignity and privacy upon which this country was founded. Some states are now posting pictures and biographies of parents with outstanding balances on the internet in an attempt to humiliate them into compliance. Millions are being spent developing linked computer systems and databases in order to locate and seize the "assets" of "deadbeat parents", when in fact, the primary reason that most NCP's fall behind in their child support is inability to pay.

I believe that these measures all violate the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of tens of thousands of fathers and other non-custodial parents. The specific rights violated include the right to equal protection, to due process, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and arbitrary fines and penalties.

Furthermore, I also believe that these new measures simply will not work for the following reasons:

1. Criminalizing parents cannot be good for the children. It drives a wedge between the parent and the child, which is not only unfair to the parent, but it may severely damage the self esteem of the child.

2. The new laws will clog the court system.

3. They will result in ever increasing numbers of parents withdrawing from participation in their children's lives.

4. They will result in ever increasing numbers of parents opting out of mainstream society, to hide out from what they consider unfair prosecution.

5. They will result in parents being sent to prison simply for experiencing financial hardships and falling behind in support payments.

6. They will increase divisiveness in our society.

7. They will further reduce our civil liberties.