When Child Support Becomes a 'Debtor’s Prison'

David Pate, a professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and co-founder of Center for Family Policy and Practice — a nonprofit that advocates for social welfare policies that benefit low-income families — discusses how some child-support laws can punish parents, who don’t have custody of their offspring with jail time if they fail to pay child support and how these laws disproportionately affect African-American men. On April 9, Walter Scott was shot and killed by North Charleston Police Department officer Michael Slager, after he fled during a traffic stop. Scott's family said he probably ran because he feared he would be jailed for unpaid child support.