Ohio drops its annual arrest fest

The state can't say if the arrests produced overdue money

The state has ditched a decade-old program that rounded up deadbeat parents one day or week each year to draw attention to people late with their child support payments.

The Department of Job and Family Services said people behind in support payments don't always deserve to be handcuffed on TV. The state also can't say whether the arrests generated overdue money for children.

Sheriff's offices said they had safety concerns about the program. Counties said they couldn't always pull together the employees to administer the arrests.

"When you've got a parent in front of you who says, 'I want to pay child support but I need help,' before we lock that person up, before we put them on TV, we want to give them that opportunity to do the right thing," Doug Thompson, deputy director for the state's Office of Child Support, told the Associated Press.

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