The phone rings. Your teenage son has run away and gotten into a fight. Again.
He’s back at Sonoma County’s juvenile hall off Highway 12 in rural east Santa Rosa.
For the next several months, you attend meetings with his public defender, make his court appointments and visit him twice a week while working full time and shuttling your other children between school and sports.
Then you get the bill.
There’s no daily charge for adults booked into Sonoma County Jail, but that’s not the case for kids consigned to juvenile hall.
Parents of incarcerated Sonoma County children are billed a daily base fee of $32, among the most expensive in the state. The daily charge is in addition to restitution and a list of other fees levied by the criminal justice system, from drug testing to the staff time it takes to collect the bill.
And many parents can’t afford it.
More than $4 million in outstanding bills is hanging over the heads of the parents and guardians of children arrested in Sonoma County, according to numbers provided by the probation department. About $1 million was billed within the past three years. The debt can result in garnished wages, deductions from state tax refunds and calls from collection agencies.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Sonoma County Public Defender Kathleen Pozzi, adding that a child’s arrest is traumatic for families, and the hefty bills that follow further strain parents’ and guardians’ efforts to maintain stability.
“Parents are responsible for their children, but should they be held responsible, financially, when they have no choice, when their children are being housed in a facility?”
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