Testing Privatization of “Long Arm” Service of Process

Abstract

The research addresses questions about the desirability of privatizing a key component of the child support enforcement process, namely, the serving of legal documents or “service of process” for cases in which the noncustodial parent is living in another state. Child support enforcement cases that require this type of “long arm” service of process were randomly assigned to a private vendor and to out-of-state sheriff offices using an experimental research design. The author finds that although there is no difference in the time it took the two groups to process cases, the private vendor was more successful, on average, at performing this function. Furthermore, he finds that the higher success rate of the private vendor is sufficient to produce a substantively important increase in collections in child support enforcement cases. Additional questions about the suitability of privatizing “service of process” and other like services are also discussed.