Prisons of Debt - by Lynne Haney

About the Book

"A profound portrait of the hidden injustices that trap fathers in a cycle of punishment and debt. In the first study of its kind, sociologist Lynne Haney travels into state institutions across the country to document the experiences of the millions of fathers cycling through the criminal justice and child support systems. Prisons of Debt shows how these systems work together to create complex entanglements-rather than "piling up" in men's lives, these entanglements form feedback loops of disadvantage. The prison-child support pipeline flows in both directions, deepening parents' debt and criminal justice involvement. Through moving accounts of men struggling to be fathers from behind prison walls and under the weight of support debt, Prisons of Debt exposes how the criminalization of child support undermines the most essential of familial relationships. Haney argues that these state systems can end up producing exactly the kind of parent they fear and loathe: bitter, unreliable, and cyclical fathers. Based on observations of 1,200 child support cases and interviews with 145 indebted fathers in New York, California, and Florida, Prisons of Debt reveals the actual practices of child support adjudication and enforcement alongside the lived realities of fathers trapped in those systems. The result is a rigorously documented analysis of how poor men are too often denied their rights of citizenship and of fatherhood"--

Book Synopsis

A profound portrait of the hidden injustices that trap fathers in a cycle of punishment and debt.

In the first study of its kind, sociologist Lynne Haney travels into state institutions across the country to document the experiences of the millions of fathers cycling through the criminal justice and child support systems. Prisons of Debt shows how these systems work together to create complex entanglements--rather than "piling up" in men's lives, these entanglements form feedback loops of disadvantage. The prison-child support pipeline flows in both directions, deepening parents' debt and criminal justice involvement.

Through moving accounts of men struggling to be fathers from behind prison walls and under the weight of support debt, Prisons of Debt exposes how the criminalization of child support undermines the most essential of familial relationships. Haney argues that these state systems can end up producing exactly the kind of parent they fear and loathe: bitter, unreliable, and cyclical fathers. Based on observations of 1,200 child support cases and interviews with 145 indebted fathers in New York, California, and Florida, Prisons of Debt reveals the actual practices of child support adjudication and enforcement alongside the lived realities of fathers trapped in those systems. The result is a rigorously documented analysis of how poor men are too often denied their rights of citizenship and of fatherhood.

From the Back Cover

"Prisons of Debt is an absolutely compelling and tragic account of how the child support and criminal legal systems jointly produce mass indebtedness among the most disadvantaged fathers, thereby exacerbating the problems they are supposed to solve. Lynne Haney's astute ethnographic observations, and her gripping in-depth interviews with fathers caught up in these intersecting systems, dismantle the 'deadbeat dad' trope, echoed in media and in court, to reveal the exceptionally high cost of our current child support policies for children, families, and society."--Mona Lynch, author of Hard Bargains: The Coercive Power of Drug Laws in Federal Court

"In Haney's beautifully written Prisons of Debt, we learn what the merger of the criminal legal and child support systems has wrought for formerly incarcerated parents, especially low-income fathers of color, who bear the brunt of the dual systems' mutually reinforcing modes of surveillance and control. Punitive state policies both deny indebted parents' financial citizenship and deprive them of their liberty. The result: it is near impossible to resolve their ever-accumulating debt; it is also extremely difficult to contribute to their children's lives in satisfying and meaningful ways. It is a system that produces few, if any, winners: fathers struggle mightily to show up for their children; mothers continue to raise their children with meager support; and their children fail to get the resources and protections they need and deserve to survive and thrive. Prisons of Debt is a compelling and devastating account and a must-read for students of punishment and beyond."--Sandra Susan Smith, Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice and Faculty Chair for the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at the Harvard Kennedy School

"This is a book of immense importance about the criminalization of poverty. Throwing poor people into debtors' prisons for their inability to pay child support is unconscionable, but as Haney tells us in this timely, pressing book, all too common."--Stephen Bright, Yale Law School,​ and former Director, Southern Center for Human Rights​

"This is an important book, extremely well researched, documented, illustrated, and argued. It provides a deep and thorough understanding of poverty governance and the mechanisms by which inequality is institutionally organized and reproduced. The ethnography and interviews are expertly woven through the text to provide rich, and at times dramatic, testimonies of the institutional processes central to the book."--Timothy Black, coauthor of It's a Setup: Fathering from the Social and Economic Margins

"An incredibly important book, both with respect to its rigor and multilayered analysis and the importance of its findings. Prisons of Debt successfully shows how child support orders are core to understanding the long reach or aftermath of mass incarceration experiences."--Sara Wakefield, coauthor of Children of the Prison Boom: Mass Incarceration and the Future of American Inequality

Review Quotes

"Lynne Haney provides the first large-scale and rigorous accounting of the mutually reinforcing linkages between the criminal legal system and the child support system. This book is a thoughtful and careful accounting of how these two institutions influence one another to create compounding disadvantages for the vulnerable men who become entangled in these systems."-- "Social Forces"

"Drawing on years of research in the New York, Florida, and California family court and prison systems, Haney weaves these men's stories into a disturbing portrait of the U.S. child support enforcement regime as a modern form of debtors' prison. The result is by far the most comprehensive and illuminating account of the interplay between child support enforcement and incarceration in the contemporary United States."-- "Boston Review"

"A fantastic ethnography. . . .Lynne Haney has navigated readers through the institutional bureaucracy that leaves these fathers' lives in shambles and bleeds into their lived experiences far beyond their incarcerations. Her intention to give voice to these fathers and center their experiences is remarkably done."-- "Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books"

"Haney shows how state bureaucracies seem to conspire against historically marginalized individuals, leaving indebted fathers beholden to the state and distanced from their children. She illustrates how systems of social exclusion and punishment operate by sharing the haunting stories of men who face the daunting task of navigating debt and a lack of gainful employment while under close surveillance by police. . . . This book uncovers structural inequalities and offers potential solutions. Highly recommended."-- "CHOICE"

About the Author

Lynne Haney is Professor of Sociology at New York University and author of the award-winning books Offending Women and Inventing the Needy. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program.