What's A Nice Guy Like You Doing In A Place Like This?

That question entered my mind as I sat in a holding cell at a county jail in Georgia.  For 3 days, I slept on the bare, cold concrete floor of a 24x18 ft. cinder block cell along with 27 other detainees waiting to be processed and moved into an 80 man cell-pod.

"So this is what happens to fathers who encounter a prolonged period of unemployment and cannot earn enough to pay their court ordered child support!,” I thought to myself.

(The judicial system punishes all fathers who do not /can not pay their child support regardless of their career/job being affected by a failing economy.  Bringing even more shame to their pain & humiliation.)

There are fathers who do not want to support their children as they should because of indifference, neglect and selfishness.

However, there are fathers, like myself, who struggle day in and day out to do the right thing by their own flesh & blood.

The unfortunate trap in the "blindness of justice" is that the well intending fathers are caught, charged with contempt of court, and incarcerated for being unemployed too long without regard to circumstances or the economy.

So what about the dads who want to work; who want to do the right thing; who love their children and truly do all they can to support & provide for their children?

I happen to be one of those fathers who want to work, to find work& support my dear children that Father God gave me!

So as you read further, I ask you for your understanding; not your judgment.

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Allow me to take a peek into the preceding months of my incarceration.

On the heels of the "housing bust", my successful handyman company of 11 years experienced a severe financial setback.  Eventually, I had to close the business.

Unfortunately, I had no control over my income because I serviced a market that predicted my income.

I moved from a rural area to Northeast Atlanta in hopes of starting over & finding another "deep well", but found all of my efforts to be fruitless.

In disbelief, I was faced one day with a life altering crisis.  The choice of shelter or food!

Never in my life had I ever found myself in this situation.  I had always all of my adult life been able to provide for myself & my family.  Yet my efforts continued to fail my many attempts to obtain the support needed to sustain my obligations.

Fortunately, I found a room to rent in exchange for home maintenance and chores in lieu of paying any moneys which was nonexistent in my life at the time.

Very quickly, I reluctantly had to make a core shift in my focus and draw upon other skills I had explored previously. One such skill was that of writing, having earned a degree in writing from Georgia State University.

So I took what knowledge & experience I had acquired from 35 years of repairing & remodeling homes, and I started writing blogs and developing websites.

I focused all of my energies on teaching myself how to be profitable in this new "career" of writing, working up to 16 hr. days to hasten my "paycheck".

I wrote multiple blogs with over 2700 twitter followers, developed 4 websites, and authored 3 how-to books & a training manual for Do-It-Yourselfers with home maintenance issues.

The months rolled on with a lot of hard work, but no promising results from my websites.

"All I need is to sell these books online. I just need one lucky break." I prayed.

Here, another hindrance to meeting my child support obligations.

Stress mounted as the child support letters came in with threats of being put in jail.

Out of desperation, I made a desperate decision to drive my car which had been parked in the garage for months having no reason to drive anywhere, to find employment at a local meeting where some real estate agents were gathering.

I took a huge risk in being stopped by the police due to expired insurance, expired registration and tags; and possibly a  suspended driver’s license, the first penalty induced by the child support agency.

"A man has to do, what a man has to do!"  Therefore, I went on a hopeful mission to find work so I may take some money with me to court (often times, the child support agency will accept a smaller amount if one is unable to pay the full arrearage.)

Sure enough, on the way a policeman discovered my expired tag & stopped me!

He stated there was a bench warrant issued for my arrest due to contempt of court over a child support order, thus I was subsequently arrested and placed in jail for over 4 months.

When my inmates asked why I am there, I’d say, "For being unemployed too long."

All humor aside, they would listen to my story as to what lead me to that place. And even these hardened criminals would scratch their heads and say, "Locking up a man who was out looking for work, and then making sure he did not have a chance to find work. Man, that just doesn't make any sense!"

Many days I would wish I had committed a crime so I could have posted a bond and gotten out much faster. As opposed to sitting there in jail not ever knowing when I was going to be released.

I knew that the inmates looked at me and wondered why I was there. They all saw that I was out of my element.  That I did not belong.

Then again, I asked myself, "What is a nice guy like me, doing in a place like this?"

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A Final Thought:   

Why does the law punish fathers with forced unemployment by incarceration and not mandating a work release program in order to help fathers do what we want to do - do honest work and support our children as we desire? 

Please write your state representative and demand better child support laws within your state to help fathers find work, not punish them with further unemployment through prolonged imprisonment.