HILO, Hawai'i — The first indictments of parents for deliberately evading court-ordered child support payments have been released on the Big Island, and word is getting around.

Deputy prosecutor Rick Damerville said people have walked into Child Support Enforcement Agency offices with cash to try to catch up on their payments after news spread of four Big Island grand jury indictments last week.

"The coconut wireless is already letting people know that we are not kidding about this," Damerville said.

The indictments are part of a crackdown on child support scofflaws on the Big Island by a special unit formed in the county prosecutor's office. The unit was established to seek criminal charges in cases where absent parents have the ability to pay child support, but are refusing to do so.

Damerville said he expects the Big Island unit will gradually ramp up to about 100 prosecutions a year for failure to provide support. That should convince a lot of parents to pay up, he said.

"There's a whole lot of people out there that when they realize there is a realistic chance that they might go to jail, that they might be convicted of a crime, that their name may end up in the newspaper with the term 'indictment,' they're going to decide that it's cheaper to pay their child support," Damerville said "It will have a positive impact, no question."

Persistent failure to pay support has long been a misdemeanor criminal offense punishable by up to a year in jail, but criminal prosecutions have been rare in Hawai'i. Apart from the indictments last week, Damerville said he knows of only a half-dozen cases in the last 25 years where people were arrested for persistent non-support, and only one conviction so far.

HAWAI'I WORST IN U.S.

Hawai'i ranked last in the nation in 2005 in its delinquency collection rate in a federal list of 54 jurisdictions, according to a state audit of the Child Support Enforcement Agency.

Over the years the state has tried civil sanctions and other collection strategies such as suspending debtors' professional licenses and driver's licenses, seizing tax refunds and garnishing wages.

State lawmakers last year provided money to the state attorney general's office to hire staff to pursue civil contempt-of-court cases against scofflaw parents statewide.

Big Island prosecutors are hoping to get better results by pursuing criminal charges against delinquent parents.

The new prosecution unit is being financed with a federal grant of about $103,000, which pays for an investigator and a paralegal to build criminal cases.

AVERAGE OWED: $20,000+

The Child Support Enforcement Agency forwarded 900 Big Island cases to prosecutors that were deemed to be so non-compliant with court-ordered payments that they deserved to be considered for criminal prosecution, Damerville said.

He estimated the average owed by each of the 900 was considerably more than $20,000, with the largest involving more than $100,000 in unpaid support, meaning that many millions of dollars is going uncollected on the Big Island.

As of June 2006, the CSEA had about 120,000 cases statewide, and Damerville said he has heard estimates that about 8,000 people on the Big Island are seriously behind on their child-support payments.

The county enforcement effort will seek out only those parents who have the ability to pay, but refuse to do so. It will not target people who cannot pay for legitimate reasons, such as parents with disabilities, prosecutors said.

Damerville, who will prosecute the cases for the county, argues even a misdemeanor criminal charge makes a difference, especially when all the resources available to prosecutors are brought to bear.

People who owe support sometimes work cash jobs or hide assets, making it difficult for the understaffed Child Support Enforcement Agency to prove that the parents can pay, he said.

On the Big Island, investigators working on child support cases already have subpoenaed bank records and documents in connection with real estate transactions, and in one of the indictment cases served a search warrant on a home to look for evidence of a parent's ability to pay. They found it, Damerville said.

FIRST TARGETS

Last week's indictments charge David B. Almond, Danny Ray Cox, Alexis Fowlers and Obed Kuahiwinui with "knowingly and persistently" failing to provide support they were allegedly able to provide.

The indictments allege that Almond and Fowlers owe support for one child each, Cox for two children and Kuahiwinui for three.

Damerville said he is going after parents regardless of their occupation.

"I don't want the public out there to get the impression that we're only going after doctors and lawyers," Damerville said. "In these cases there is a broad spectrum of occupations. Whether you're a dishwasher, an electrician, a contractor, an attorney, a doctor, it doesn't make any difference."

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.