PAY BACK

Every day thousands of Arkansas children miss having their daily needs met. It`s not because the person caring for them doesn`t want to do better. It`s because the parent who isn`t in their lives also isn`t paying the child support they owe. In a first-in-the state effort, Saline county`s creating a special task force to go after some of those delinquent dollars. Two state investigators will add on to their duties and help line up bulk cases of offenders for the county. The cases will be of the worst offenders and prosecutors will push jail time for those who won`t pay. Those who refuse to come up with the 25 thousand dollars or more they owe in back support and are convicted, could spend up to 25 years in prison. This time next year, prosecutors intend to produce a report card detailing how many parents have been prosecuted and how much money`s been recouped for the county`s kids. Right now the state`s monitoring more than 713 million dollars worth of child support that parents owe.