Financial ImpactArticles
- Are You a Fleeing Felon? A Call for the Social Security Administration to Adhere to Its Fugitive Felon Provision’s Plain Meaning to Prevent Unfair and Unsuspecting Benefit Suspensions of Non-Fleeing SSI Recipients
- Author: Brandon G. Myers, 2005 Utah Law Review 1079 (2005). The author discusses the background of the fugitive felon provision, the implementing regulations and the application of the regulations by the Social Security Administration. He proposes that the Social Security Administration should adhere to the plain meaning of “fleeing to avoid” prosecution and require a finding of intent before any suspensions of SSI benefits are triggered.
- Colossal Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions (the DWI Reform Act of 2006)
- Author: Glenn Edward Murray (2006)
- Consequences of a Conviction: Fees and Surcharges
- Author: Justice Phylis Skloot Bamberger. Paper prepared for the Partners in Justice Colloquium held on May 9, 2005 (www.courts.state.ny.us/ip/partnersinjustice/agenda.pdf). Paper discusses the various fees and surcharges, including the statutory authorities; the ex post facto issues raised by the fees and surcharges; the statutory payment provisions; and collection from defendants incarcerated for fewer than sixty days and for defendants serving more than sixty days in prison.
- Drug Offenders: Various Factors May Limit the Impacts of Federal Laws That Provide for Denial of Selected Benefits
- Author: United States Government Government Accounting Office (September 2005). According to the Report, about 41,000 applicants during the academic year 2003 – 2004 were disqualified from receiving postsecondary education loans and grants because of drug convictions. According to the Report, GAO did the Study since “[s]everal provisions of federal law allow for or require certain federal benefits to be denied to individuals convicted of drug offenses in federal or state courts. These benefits include Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, federally assisted housing, postsecondary education assistance, and some federal contracts and licenses. Given the sizeable population of drug offenders in the United States, the number and the impacts of federal denial of benefit provisions may be particularly important if the operations of these provisions work at cross purposes with recent federal initiatives intended to ease prisoner reentry and foster prisonere reintegration into society.”
- Duke Legal Assistance Project, Fleeing Felon: Veteran’s Administration Benefits
- Federal Statutes Imposing Collateral Consequences Upon Conviction
- Author: United States Department of Justice, Office of the Pardon Attorney (November, 2000). Monograph of the U.S. Department of Justice that highlights signficant collateral consequences that are imposed by federal law after the conviction of a felony offense. The description of the federal benefits that may be revoked or limited upon the conviction of a crime is at pages 9-11.
- Financial Consequences Associated with Conviction, Incarceration and Reentry” A Suggested List of References
- Prisoner Reentry Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; from the Series on Reentry Research, “Sentencing for Dollars: The Financial Consequences of a Criminal Conviction (February 9, 2007)
- Fleeing Felon Overview
- Author: Duke Legal Assistance Project</li
- From Hard Time to Full Time: Strategies to Help Move Ex-Offenders from Welfare to Work
- Author: U. S. Department of Labor (June 2001)
- How to Construct an Underclass, Or How the War on Drugs Became a War on Education
- Authors: Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen, 6 Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 61 (2002). The authors state that “[t]he war on drugs has spawned a second front–a war on education. The casualties of this war are all poor or lower-income people who cannot afford to buy a private education. This article details the consequences of this other war, and explores some legislative and litigation strategies for reclaiming educational opportunity for all Americans.” Id. at 63. 20 U.S.C. Section 1091(r), which makes individuals who have been convicted of a drug offense temporarily or permanently ineligible for federal college loans and grants, is discussed primarily at p. 62 and pp. 68 – 71.
- Income Injustice: The Impact of Welfare Reform’s Fleeing Felon Regulations on SSI Recipients
- Author: Kathryn J. Lewis (June 2002). The author, in her policy analysis of the fleeing felon statute and implementing regulations, discusses the national impact of the regulations, the cost of implementing the regulations, the disproportionate punishment of minor offenses, and procedural due process concerns. She analyzes the impact on disabled individuals and concludes with many recommendations to either eliminate or modify the regulations. She concludes that “[t]he so-called ‘fleeing felon’ regulations, which affect primarily disabled individuals who are neither fleeing apprehension nor charged with a felony, fail to provide adequate safeguards against unwarranted suspensions, suspend life-sustaining benefits abruptly with little or no notice, and punish disproportionately minor offenses.” Id. at 11.
- New Financial Penalties Proposed in the New York State Executive Budget 2006
- Author: Center for Community Alternatives (2006). A discussion of the proposals in the 2006 Executive Budget that increase financial penalties.
- New Frontiers in Fair Lending: Confronting Lending Discrimination Against Ex-Offenders
- Author: Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, 80 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1237 (October 2005). The author posits that “the use of criminal history in any determination of creditworthiness should be prohibited or at least curtailed. Given the practice’s serious implications for both the ability of individual ex-offenders to reenter society effectively, as well as for the ability of receiving communities to effectuate crime prevention and community development initiatives, … the federal government ought to take the lead in developing statutory and administrative solutions that effectively fill the ‘advocacy gap’ in credit and financial services where recourse to the courts is not available.”
- Sentencing for Dollars: Policy Considerations
- Author: Center for Community Alternatives (2007). Responsible policy analysis should focus on the purposes of the fines, fees or surcharges. Financial penalties disproportionately affect the poor and should not be used to close budget gaps. There needs to be a proper balance between shifting costs to the offenders when the penalty bears some relationship to the offense and the “need to promote successful reentry with a minimum of unnecessary, harmful and unintended collateral consequences.”
- Should We Be “Sentencing for Dollars?: Rethinking the Proposed Drug Tax
- Author: Center for Community Alternatives. A discussion of the Governor’s 2008-2009 budget.
- Social Security: How the Social Security Administration’s “Fugitive Felon Program” Harms Disabled, Retired and Poor Americans Without Aiding Law Enforcement
- Author: Mental Health Project, Urban Justice Center (October 2007)
- The Consequences of Criminal Proceedings in New York State: A Guide for Criminal Defense Attorneys and Other Advocates for Persons with Criminal Records
- Author: The Bronx Defenders (2007). This guide outlines the collateral consequences of criminal proceedings in New York The section on public benefits is at pages 20 – 23 and the section on federal student loans is on page 29.
- The Political Economy of Up-Front Fees for Indigent Criminal Defense
- Authors: Ronald F. Wright and Wayne A. Logan; William Mitchell College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Services, Research Paper No. 27 and Wake Forest University, Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 05-19; 47 William and Mary Review (April 2006). (Article available without charge from the Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection at http://ssrn.com/abstract=805426.) The authors discuss the origin of state laws that have criminal defendants pay a portion of the costs of their state-appointed counsel. They analyze data from two jurisdictions, Minnesota and North Carolina, that have thse co-pay laws.
- Welfare As We Know It Now: What New York’s New Welfare Laws Mean for People with Criminal Records, Substance Abuse Histories and HIV/AIDS
- Author: Legal Action Center (July 2000). The Manual, which is a guide for service providers and advocates, describes the changes in welfare in New York as a result of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 and the New York State Welfare Reform Act of 1997. The discussion of how welfare reform affects people with criminal records is in Part III at pages 14 – 16.