counseling prisoners on child-support obligations

As Turner v. Rogers highlights, indigent child-support debtors facing incarceration are not granted the benefit of counsel in South Carolina.  Counsel here does not mean a child-support administrator offering advice to the indigent child-support debtor.  Counsel here means a lawyer certified to argue in court of law and professionally responsible for serving the interest of her or his client, the indigent child-support debtor.  To appreciate better the importance of this difference, consider a child-support obligation education program currently being offered to men prisoners in California.

On March 21, 2011, the California Department of Corrections issued a press release entitled “Child Support Obligations Education Begins for California Inmates.”  The subtitle of the press release declares: “Effort to educate inmates on their rights, intended to reduce recidivism.”  This educational effort has been designed and implemented through a partnership with the California Department of Child Support Services, the California Child Support Directors Association, El Dorado County Department of Child Support Services, Marin County Department of Child Support Services, and Solano County Department of Child Support Services.  None of the partners are organizations whose primarily mission is to uphold inmates rights.  None of the partners works with released prisoners with the primary purpose of helping released prisoners to avoid recidivism.  Can anyone really believe that the primary purpose of this child support obligation education is to “educate inmates on their rights, intended to reduce recidivism”?

The press release doesn’t waste many words before declaring a plausible primary purpose for the educational effort.  The first sentence of the press release’s text declares that the educational program’s purpose is “to inform state prison inmates of their rights under child support collection laws.” After just one more sentence, the press release declares a more plausible purpose: “Consistent payment of child support is our primary objective.”  Here’s the relevant text so you can see for yourself the full context of this verbal manipulation:

Child Support Obligations Education Begins for California Inmates

Effort to educate inmates on their rights, intended to reduce recidivism

SACRAMENTO – A unique partnership of child support organizations has resulted in a comprehensive educational effort to inform state prison inmates of their rights under child support collection laws.

Beginning this month, a video entitled, “Working with the Child Support Program: What You Need to Do” will be shown on inmate television at all 30 state male institutions, educating inmates who have active or pending child support orders on how to handle this obligation while incarcerated.

“Consistent payment of child support is our primary objective.” said Jan Sturla, Director, California Department of Child Support Services. “The child support program will work with obligors to address their child support while incarcerated. It is our objective to educate incarcerated obligors about the child support process, so they can get back on track in meeting their obligations to their children.”

Given the enormous financial burdens that the child-support system imposes on prisoners who fail to acquire and file child-support forms under tight deadlines, the educational effort sensibly emphasizes quickly filing child-support forms.[*]  Nonetheless, just like the Texas Attorney General’s counsel to incarcerated persons concerning child support, the California child-support agencies’ child support obligation education for prisoners doesn’t adequately serve prisoners’ interests.  For example, it doesn’t encourage prisoners to acquire highly certain paternity information and information about the marital status of the mother before signing a legal acknowledgement of paternity.

Child-support agencies are state agencies that administer, collect, and distribute (to non-impoverished parents) particular taxes called child support.  Child-support agencies alone are unlikely to provide the best counsel or education for child-support obligors and potential obligors.

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Read more:

Note: Child support obligations education video for California male prisoners included above. Update: California has made this video private, perhaps so that the public cannot review how the state of California is manipulating prisons with respect to “child support.”

measure mobile photo integration via Monday/Sunday posting change

Photo-sharing activity on Flickr jumps on Monday and then gradually decreases to Sunday.  Averaged across 10/9 May and 17/16 May 2011, the Monday/Sunday change for DSLR cameras, point & shoot cameras, and camera phones are 36%, 26%, and 23%, respectively.[*]  Uploading to Flickr photos accumulated over the weekend plausibly explains the Monday/Sunday increase.

Flickr is working hard to develop good mobile applications.  Good mobile applications would allow simple, immediate transfer of photos from a camera phone to Flickr.  If Flickr camera phone users were using such mobile apps, one might expect to see a lower (and possibly even negative) Monday/Sunday posting change.  The Monday/Sunday posting change might serve as an indicator for Flickr mobile integration.

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Related post: photo sharing via mobile phones

Statistics:  Needle database of Flickr camera use statistics

[*] Flickr camera statistics are updated every day about 5pm EST.  Needle collects the data at 3am. Hence in the Flickr Needle database, the data collected on a given collection date refers to Flickr data posted about 5pm EST on the previous day.  I’ve defined the data day (which determines the day of the week) as the day prior to the Needle collection date.  That appears to be more plausible than defining the data day as two days before the Needle collection date.

exploiting bloggers isn't enough to make local news business attractive

Local news today appears to be an unattractive business.  While Groupon has soared to an estimated valuation of tens billions of dollars in only a couple of years, many local news startups have failed.  Not one has has achieved business success anywhere near that of Groupon.  Offering purchase deals and opportunities, rather than news and advertisements, seems to be the most effective way to gather revenue from local merchants.

TBD, an ambitious local news venture of Allbritton Communications Company, failed even through it succeeded in assembling an impressive DC-area blogger network under amazing terms.  The contract that TBD offered bloggers committed TBD to nothing more than listing the bloggers in its blogger network directory.  In return, TBD asked for rights to the blogger’s content:

you hereby grant to TBD and its affiliates, successors and licensees a non-exclusive, royalty-free, and fully sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use, publish, distribute, perform, display, modify, promote and create derivative works from your Content in any media without compensation to you or any third party.

That seems roughly equivalent to a Creative Commons attribution license, granted just to TBD.  Sharing content under such a Creative Commons license is reasonable and praiseworthy.  But why offer that sort of license to just one commercial news company?

More astonishing was TBD asking bloggers to indemnify it for its use of bloggers’ work.  TBD’s contract with bloggers stated:

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless TBD, its affiliates, and each of their directors, officers, employees, representatives and agents from and against any actions, claims, demands, liabilities, expenses and costs, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of any third-party claim relating to your breach of any of your representations, warranties or obligations under this Membership Agreement.

The “representations, warranties or obligations under this Membership Agreement” involved judgments about the blogger’s content:

(b) you own all right, title and interest in the Content or otherwise have the right to license the Content to TBD for TBD’s use as contemplated in this Member Agreement;

(c) neither the Content nor your preparation of the Content will be libelous, nor will it violate the right of privacy or publicity of any person;

(d) the Content will not infringe any copyright, trademark, service mark, trade secret, or proprietary rights; and

(e) the Content is in compliance with all applicable local, state, national, and international laws, rules and regulations.

TBD, given its professional news expertise, would seem to be better positioned than a blogger to make these judgments about a blogger’s content before TBD chose to include that content in its news product.  Why would an non-professional blogger take responsibility for these judgments on behalf of TBD?  Why would an individual blogger choose to indemnify a large corporation for third-party claims against that corporation related to those judgments?

Many bloggers accepted TBD’s contract.  That amazes me.  Perhaps bloggers didn’t actually read the contract, or think about it.  Many of those bloggers were unincorporated individuals blogging without any financial compensation.  Yet they personally indemnified a large commercial corporation for its free use of their content.

The local news business has been difficult despite corporations success in exploiting unpaid bloggers.  Although TBD successfully recruited a large network of bloggers, TBD’s original local news business was essentially dead within six months of starting operations.  The Huffington Post was quite successful in aggregating unpaid bloggers’ work, although now it faces some blowback.  AOL is currently investing heavily in Patch and seeking to assemble a large network of bloggers. Many industry observers question Patch’s prospect for success.  But recruiting many unpaid bloggers to contribute their work probably won’t be a major challenge for Patch.