We estimate that about 60.7 percent of individuals with outstanding warrants will be paid Title II and XVI benefits as a result of the Martinez settlement agreement. The remaining 39.3 percent will continue to have their benefits stopped....The report was requested by Congress. One question asked of OIG concerned the "challenges" of implementing the fugitive felon program. In its response, OIG somehow failed to mention the fact that many, perhaps most, of the people whose benefits were cut off were not truly fugitives, a fact which led to the class action. I would say that OIG is having trouble accepting responsibility for its own role in this fiasco.
The settlement agreement, however, does not restrict SSA or the Office of the Inspector General’s (OIG) data sharing activities with law enforcement. Therefore, the OIG will continue to obtain data from law enforcement agencies on fugitive felons wanted for all offense codes and match that data with SSA’s records. Additionally, the OIG will share information in SSA’s records regarding the fugitive’s location (that is, address information) with law enforcement so that they can potentially arrest the fugitive. ...
SSA identified fugitive felons and probation or parole violators through data matches between the Agency’s beneficiary rolls and Federal and State warrant databases. Since the program’s inception in August 1996 through July 2009, it has contributed to a total of 86,309 arrests. ...
Are there any other legislative changes/additions you would recommend to this language to ensure the future success of the fugitive felon program? ...
Removing the word “fleeing” from the language of the law and incorporating language prohibiting payment to individuals with an outstanding felony warrant would enable SSA to not pay benefits to these individuals and prohibit them from being representative payees. Another option would be to define what is meant by the word “fleeing” in the context of this legislation.
Oct 22, 2009
OIG Report On Fugitive Felons
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2 comments:
This kind of thinking is outrageous. Apart from the fact that such an amendment to the language of the statute would penalize large numbers of people WHO ARE NOT GUILTY OF A CRIME, it disregards the fact that the purpose of this provision in the Social Security Act was to mirror the provisions of federal law which do make it a crime to flee to avoid prosecution. It is a crime under Title 18 of the U.S. Code to flee a jurisdiction to avoid prosecution, so at least the Social Security Act has some rationale in penalizing people who might otherwise be guilty of a federal crime. In fact, interpretations of Title 18 formed one basis of the challenges to the SSA's regulations, for SSA was applying the language in a way to broaden the original purpose and to shift the burden of proving the status of "fleeing" onto the recipient, instead of the government.
Unbelievable.
We estimate that about 60.7 percent of individuals with outstanding warrants will be paid Title II and XVI benefits as a result of the Martinez settlement agreement.
Surely they mean 60.7% of those who have been found disabled and have outstanding warrants. Otherwise, well... there are a lot of outstanding felony warrants out there.
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