From a press release issued by the Coalition for Citizens with Disablities (CCD), the major umbrella group of nonprofits working to help the disabled:
On Wednesday, September 13, 2017, the House Ways and Means Committee passed an amended version of H.R. 2792, the Control Unlawful Fugitive Felons [CUFF] Act of 2017. This bill would cut off Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits entirely for certain people with disabilities, as well as seniors. The proposed cut would bar payment of SSI benefits to people with an outstanding arrest warrant for an alleged felony or for an alleged violation of probation or parole.
H.R. 2792 would revive an old, failed policy that had catastrophic effects for many people with disabilities and seniors, employing procedures that did not withstand judicial scrutiny. This proposal would not help law enforcement secure arrests. The Social Security Act already prohibits payments to people fleeing from law enforcement to avoid prosecution or imprisonment. The Social Security Administration (SSA) currently notifies law enforcement of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for an alleged felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in SSA’s databases. This bill would not change these policies and procedures.
Based on prior experience with SSA’s failed former policy, the people who would be affected are those whose cases are inactive and whom law enforcement is not pursuing. Most of the warrants in question are decades old and involve minor infractions, including warrants routinely issued when a person was unable to pay a fine or court fee, or a probation supervision fee. Many people are not even aware that a warrant was issued for them, as warrants are often not served on the individual. Some people will be swept up as a result of mistaken identity, or paperwork errors, which can take months or even years to resolve.
Resolving these warrants can be extremely hard and costly: people often must go before a judge in the issuing jurisdiction, and typically need counsel to assist them in navigating the process. Often, people have moved in the intervening years and live far from the issuing jurisdiction. ...Having seen this before, I definitely agree with CCD. This is the sort of thing that looks good from 30,000 feet. However, at ground level it's obviously unfair. People are deprived of their income over minor matters from many years earlier and sometimes they've done nothing wrong. They have to persuade prosecutors to dismiss ancient charges that couldn't possibly be prosecuted. Prosecutors are sometimes cooperative, sometimes hostile. It just depends upon the prosecutor. It's not fighting crime. It's not achieving any worthy goal. It's just harsh.
The Way to be Mean Committee sounds more accurate. Who is responsible for floating this awful idea of a bill, which has already been shown to be unfair and harmful through a failed SSA policy? Kristi Noem (S. Dakota) and Sam Johnson (Texas).
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago I had a case were I was able to secure a fully favorable decision for a claimant. However, SSA refused to pay the claim because they had marked my client as a "fleeing felon." It turns out that 25 years earlier she had pled to a felony in Los Angles (my client now lived in Flint, MI), and received probation. After completing probation, she moved to Michigan. However, the probation office never filed the proper form to indicate that her probation was complete, so she was listed in some database somewhere as not complying with her probation.
ReplyDeleteMy client had to hire a lawyer in CA to correct this matter. The most difficult part was that the authorities in CA were baffled as to why any of this needed to be done as it was a simple paperwork mistake, and they were not actively pursing my client for any probation violation. The prosecutor thought this entire matter was absurd, and was annoyed that he had to waste his offices time and resources to deal with this matter.
This may become typical if this new policy is implemented.
All the prior efforts to automate this back in the 90s were just cr*p. The databases are junk, there are a zillion of them and don't get started on assuming there is any standardization across jurisdictions. And the agency took the position that we were right and made people prove we were wrong and trust me, we were so very wrong so many many times. IN the interim, folks lives were turned up side down.
ReplyDeleteI had several of these cases when I worked for Legal Services. I had the resources to deal with it then but don't now. It was a headache and it would usually be for something that had happened years ago. I could sometimes use the argument, do you really want to take care of this sick individual? With some difficulty, I could find a reasonable person in the prosecutor's office and get it resolved, but it was never easy. Sometimes the person who put the freeze on the person's check had disappeared, and that complicated getting it lifted.
ReplyDeleteI dread seeing this come up again.
@9:25 Very true. Our office saw people (elderly and disabled) made homeless when they were doing that, and then go seriously into debt before they could resolve the issue...and they were the lucky ones who got pro bono help. What a terrible idea of a bill. Shame on anyone who votes for it.
ReplyDelete