A Federal Study Proved That Jailing Parents for Child Support Makes Them Pay Less. Kalamazoo's FOC Still Uses Bench Warrants.

The University of Michigan analyzed 645,827 cases across the state. Bench warrants dropped payment by 23.9 percent. The Kalamazoo County FOC continues to use them.

KALAMAZOO, Mich., April 1, 2026 — The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement funded the University of Michigan to study whether Michigan's enforcement tools actually worked. The researchers analyzed 645,827 cases from the state's own tracking system. The findings were published in 2015.

Show Cause Bench Warrants, the tool FOC offices use to arrest and jail parents who fall behind on child support, were associated with a 23.9 percentage point drop in payment. Not an increase. A drop. The statistical confidence was p<.0001. Less than one in ten thousand chance it was random.

Contempt actions dropped payment by 8 points. Delinquency notes dropped it by 4. The only tools that increased payment were income withholding and unemployment intercepts, the ones that take money directly from a paycheck. Every punitive tool made compliance worse.

All enforcement tools combined explained 8.4 percent of whether a parent pays. That means 91.6 percent of payment outcomes have nothing to do with what the FOC does.

The recommendation was clear. Prioritize income based tools over punitive ones. That was over a decade ago. The Kalamazoo County Friend of the Court continues to use bench warrants as an enforcement tool. The same tool the state's own university proved makes parents pay less.

When the Kalamazoo FOC issues a bench warrant against a parent, the data says that parent is now less likely to pay child support. The office tasked with collecting money for children is using the one tool proven to reduce the money collected for children.

“The state paid for the study. The university delivered the answer. Kalamazoo's FOC ignored it. The families in this county are living with the result.,” stated Kalamazoo Transparency Act.