• 07/05/2022
• By wizewebsite
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Sociologist Prokop: Confiscating benefits for a child for parental misconduct is on the verge of constitutionality<

Sociologist Prokop: Confiscating benefits for a child for parental misconduct is on the verge of constitutionality

As a sociologist who has been dealing with the issue of poverty for a long time, what do you say to the amendment "three times and enough"?

I understand that in some cases rigor is necessary. However, I think it can be done much better and with less consequences for children than this law. Moreover, in my opinion, it is at least on the verge of constitutionality.

Daniel Prokop

Founder of the research organization PAQ Research and sociologist who deals with issues of poverty, social inequality, education and social policy.

Member of the National Economic Council of the Government (NERV) and the expert group for the creation of the Education Strategy 2030.

In 2020, he published the book Blind Stains: On Poverty, Education, Populism and Other Challenges of Czech Society.

Works at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (FSV UK)

His problem is that even the relatively trivial offenses are linked to the seizure of benefits in material need, which are guaranteed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. At the same time, it is quite paradoxical that these are offenses as an insult to a public official, which the Czech right has recently wanted to abolish as bullying. Alternatively, some very loosely defined offenses against cohabitation - including the fact that a person "commits consent to another" or "falsely accuses him of an offense".

The second thing that bothers me about the amendment is that it punishes the whole family in a rather fundamental way, which can lead to the loss of housing. On the one hand, it punishes the whole household for the mistake of one of its members, and on the other hand, it deprives it of an income that is often equal to the line between living and non-living.

The Constitutional Court has now abolished the so-called toll-free zones, where a great debate was expected. I can't imagine going through the removal of basic child support from the Charter for the fact that their father committed trivial offenses. Only in this way will we lose three years, assign work to municipalities and courts, and postpone the real solution.

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It is also a problem that the collection of material need benefits is linked to freely defined offenses and one municipal decree, and the municipality has relative freedom to operate with this. In the past, some municipalities have shown creativity in how to take advantage of shortcomings in Czech legislation.

Can you give some examples of when you think this happened?

One of the examples is the fact that the dropout of schools in the Czech Republic is not very controlled. Many cities thus send children from shelters and hostels to special schools. Because it defines the catchment area so that the town hall and the asylum house fall within the catchment area of ​​the special school. This is happening in various ways in Kladno, Mělník, but also elsewhere.

Then there are the cases of decrees that the Constitutional Court declares unconstitutional a few years later. Various bans on sitting on the walls, but also the mentioned free zones.

For these reasons, I am afraid that when such a destructive thing for the family is linked to a municipal decree, some municipalities may be abused.

Will the amendment affect the Czech problem with executions?

The problem with foreclosures in the Czech Republic is that the untenable minimum counts for your own person and then you have a bonus for your spouse and all the children. In a large family, where both partners are in execution, everyone has a bonus for their partner and all children. This calculation is basically liquidating for single or retired people, who do not double the minimum for other people. In large families, on the other hand, you have relatively large untenable lows, so there's not much left.

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We can thus discuss whether the crossing of lows in large families does not lead to almost nothing being reduced and it is not possible for fines to be paid. Municipalities then try to circumvent this by deducting material benefits. In addition, these people often have old executions from various predatory providers in the execution queue, which should have been canceled long ago. In a sense, it is an attempt to circumvent the malfunctions of the execution system.

Let us not forget, however, that those people in execution may also owe other creditors, such as a maintenance wife or someone for rent. And the state or the municipality, instead of being at the end of the queue on the list of debtors, is ahead of them due to some absolutely trivial offense. In the queue, they get to the very beginning, taking a person's benefits in material need. For those who also have income from work, this will reduce the total income and the chance to repay the debt to other creditors.

Do we have any data, for example from abroad, how effective are such measures?

In countries like Australia, where the reduction of social benefits was introduced in some form, this was not very effective. It has turned out - specifically in the field of education - that punishment is too cumbersome. The child does not go to school, she misses 100 hours in one semester unexcused. Subsequently, a decision must be made and the punishment for the family will come, for example, a year after the problem arose. It's too late and it doesn't work.

Therefore, this has not led to a reduction in unexcused missed hours in Australia. Paradoxically, it is much less effective than sending letters to parents, where the school warns them that the child has missed 80 hours and the average at school is 50. Or introducing a social worker who calls those families at 8:10 when they are not at school. Similar soft methods, relatively simple, are tested abroad and more effective than foreclosure.

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If benefits were to be worked on in the field of education, it would be possible to transfer child allowances under the administration of the school. Not in a way where the punishment can lead to the loss of housing, when the punishment comes in a year and when, according to experience from abroad, it is ineffective. The transfer of the allowance can already be done today. In addition, it goes to the child's education, lunches, equipment, trips. It's not just a punishment.

The repressive approach in the field of education was also taken by the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Jana Maláčová (ČSSD), who wanted to take housing allowance for parents of schoolchildren ...

The previous MLSA proposal was also linked to one hundred hours. The paradox of similar policies is that they try to act as strictly as possible, but at the same time they are very inefficient and slow. Absence makes sense to deal mainly with the beginning of the school year and the beginning of school attendance, ie in the first and second grade.

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In the first grade, they learn about 400 hours in half a year. To start resolving a situation when a child misses a hundred hours unexcused means to wait until the end of the semester, when the situation is often almost unsolvable other than by failing. In the ninth grade, about a hundred missed hours can be produced earlier, on the other hand, at that moment, the person is often lost in the education system and the situation is basically impossible to solve.

In this respect, the amendment is, in a sense, far too mild. This should be resolved after twenty hours or less brutally, so as not to create problems for other children in the family, for example. For example, because of a ninth-grader who has a problem with alcohol and my absence, the family does not lose his housing and it does not affect his first-class siblings.

How do you explain that the CSSD was the initiator of two such similar proposals and voted against in the Chamber in the other case?

Maybe the change in attitude didn't affect as much education as the other area, and because they realized it could be unconstitutional.

I assume that one of the intentions of similar laws is to reduce so-called pathological phenomena. I wonder if repression in this sense, when money is being taken from such poor people, cannot create a breeding ground for the problems that these laws are supposed to solve.

I can give an example from education, where the theoretical explanation for the failure of educational policy is that something in the lowest social class is developing, which some sociologists call counter-school culture. These are attitudes towards education that not only do not appreciate its importance, but some of these people consider the school to be an institution that is hostile to them.

The precondition for those who push for repressive measures is that people will make a rational choice. That they will calculate that if they do not send the children to school, they will lose their benefits, so they will rather send them there.

In reality, however, it can further deepen the anti-school culture in the families and communities it targets. The feeling that the school is a hostile institution will spread. And even to people in this part of society who have not been affected by a specific measure. This can also have a negative impact on attendance due to the widening of this attitude.

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The best results in this area have two municipalities - Trmice and Krnov. Specifically in Krnov, they chose the opposite path, which proved to be successful in foreign research in Spain or America. The bottom line is that you incorporate parents into parenting clubs and activities to overcome the feeling of being a hostile institution. And you give children preschool education in which the family learns to work with the school and the child is better prepared.

In Krnov, attendance thus increased, and the results in PISA measurements, which the school itself does internally, also improved. In other words, preventive measures and parental involvement work. In Trmice, they try to make the children feel safe at school and even consider it an escape from the family world if they have problematic families. In turn, it helps attendance when it is not another hostile environment for children.

If I generalize it to the current amendment, then the question remains whether it will help reduce the offenses and pathological phenomena, as the submitters promise, because these people are careful when they know that there is leverage for them. Or if, on the contrary, their impression that the state is a hostile institution will be strengthened. But these are things that those who present the law should have researched.

In your opinion, how much is happening in the Czech Republic that public policy makers are examining and analyzing the impacts of the proposed measures in advance? Alternatively, what should the administration look like when someone submits such legislation? If the ministry needs it, how and for how long should it examine this before the finished proposal comes to the House?

I myself had the opportunity to help economist Štepán Jurajda from IDEA at CERGE-EI within NERV write an analysis that influenced the form of the Antivirus C covid program, which ultimately helped small companies.

We have shown that this is how it works in foreign countries. We also showed that the Antivirus B program is more advantageous for large companies, which also used it more according to MLSA data, while for small companies it was very difficult because it brings enough administration for limited support.

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As a result, Antivirus C, which forgives social security contributions, should be targeted at small businesses with up to 50 employees. Provided they will not be fired. The analysis led to a major change in the original wording of Antivirus C, which was to be aimed at companies with two-shift operation, ie large companies, and without continuing to maintain employment. In this case, I had a good feeling that the analysis had persuaded the government to take a meaningful step.

Shouldn't the government (or individual ministries) do these analyzes on its own and regularly, have its people to do so?

It's happening to some degree. For example, the MLSA in cooperation with Antivirus C worked with us. Of course, it would be good if this was done more systematically, for each ministry and for each new policy or measure. Unfortunately, there are also opposite examples when this did not work.

What examples do you have in mind?

In the case of a change in personal income tax (DPFO), such a procedure failed. Changing the structure of taxation and levies would help poor people. Our analysis with IDEA at CERGE-EI showed that due to the fact that a significant part of labor taxation in the Czech Republic takes place through levies, the poorest quintile (20 percent) of employees pay from super-gross wages over 37 percent on levies and DPFO.

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This is also due to the fact that they do not use up the discounts, which are not converted into bonuses, and also to the fact that due to the mandatory minimum for health contributions, a person pays a higher percentage of wages in the case of shorter hours. Following the tax change that took place, the burden on most employees has decreased. Except for the lower quintile. As many as 15 percent of the lowest-income employees had virtually nothing out of it. And the taxation of the bottom fifth has decreased by about one to two percentage points.

Our proposal was to keep the rates, but increase the taxpayer discount. In addition, it would be converted into a bonus, ie if one did not use it as part of a tax reduction, the rest of the social and health insurance contributions, where there are no discounts, would actually be reduced.

About ten years earlier, a fellow economist Miroslav Zámečník also dealt with a similar matter at NERV. Following the example of some countries, he promoted the so-called floor. This means that social insurance is also paid for, for example, from income in excess of CZK 100,000. This creates a discount even in those levies that are among the highest in the Czech Republic.

Both proposals would help the low-income to higher net income and repay any foreclosures faster. It would also reduce the pressure on them to move to the shadow economy, hand incomes, agreements and the like. They would help the part of the population targeted by seizures to get back on their feet. The number of people who depend on such help could also be reduced.

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