Why a Criminal Record Shouldn’t Disqualify Someone From Public Assistance

[KamaAina]

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-a-criminal-record-shouldnt-disqualify-someone-from-public-assistance/

Americans believe in the idea that everyone should get a second chance—a chance to redeem ourselves and make things right. This is a guiding principle behind a “second-chance economy”—one that would offer opportunity for approximately 650,000 people released from prison every year in America, and for tens of millions of others who have been arrested or convicted of a crime....

I know some people may say that I deserve to live in poverty because of my mistakes. But they don’t know my story. They don’t know that I was born to an abusive father and a mother with severe mental illness; or that I was given narcotics as a young child by a relative who was supposed to care for me, but instead molested me and sold my pictures through a child-pornography ring. They don’t know that by the time I was 12, I was on the streets, on my way to a life of crime and addiction, and—with no adult to care for me or advocate for me—I was in and out of the juvenile justice system, never receiving the mental-health care I needed....

 I’m on the right track now, doing right by myself, my god, my family and my community. One of the ways I’m giving back to my community is by working to create an economy that includes me and others who have served our time and are following the rules of probation or parole. A study released by the Vera Institute of Justice found that states across the country are giving people like me a second chance not just because it is the right thing to do, but because it will reduce crime and prison costs by preventing recidivism.

One obstacle to opportunity that many states are addressing is the lifetime ban on receiving public benefits and job assistance through Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for people who have a prior drug-related felony conviction. Research has shown that this policy increases recidivism and crime and is also harmful to children as well as adults who are trying to start over. In addition to causing hunger and hardship, it can also prevent people from getting the mental-health or substance-abuse treatment they need, as many of these programs rely on public assistance funding to pay individuals’ room and board. Repeal of this harmful policy has been supported by The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and is included in the REDEEM Act, bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by US Senators Cory Booker and Rand Paul.

[PatrickforO]

1. Stuff like lifetime bans on public assistance for drug felons, and taking the drivers license away

from someone who is behind on child support, or even putting someone on a lifetime public sex offender list so they can be punished FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES always sounds great to Republicans, especially those who call themselves 'Christians.'

But it isn't a good idea. It hurts our people by creating a permanent underclass of people who aren't employable and are forced to live any way they can. The result: recidivism up, prisons full, crime up, insurance and security costs higher and a drag on the economy from less demand for goods and services.

It is more than that, though. We've gotten so used to trying to argue with these conservative know-nothings using facts and numbers, but that doesn't work. They keep doing shit like what that idiot Brownback is doing in Kansas. Thank God I don't live there!

Let's talk about the real cost, then, shall we? Besides all the other things I've mentioned, there is a huge moral and social cost to arranging our economy so that an ever-increasing group lose everything forever. It's wrong. The purpose of our corrections system is to punish people for crimes they've committed, but when someone finishes his/her sentence, then that debt to society is paid. It's time for a second chance. To create policies that hold people down their whole lives goes against everything this country is supposed to stand for.

I know many of you reading this aren't Christian or or even religious at all, but one of the greatest lessons the bible teaches is the golden rule; to do unto others as you would wish them to do unto you. Religion aside, if you're following this rule, then it means you have empathy, which is the ability to put your self in the other person's place. You also have compassion, and are ready to extend mercy, kindness and new opportunity just because that's what you would want if the situation were reversed and you were the downtrodden.

Where have we lost this basic morality? During my life so many people have extended kindness and mercy to me, and not ground on me like they could have...and I have paid this forward. Why do we have to create merciless and hateful policies? Shouldn't the policies we create reflect who we are as a people?

Just some thoughts...

[haele]

4. Because it's uniquely American to laugh at ethics. Ethics are for suckers.

In case you didn't get that.
The "golden" rule in both business, politics, and personal life has been around since the Babylonians; "Treat others the way you want to be treated/Don't treat others the way you don't want them to treat you" in one form or another has been since civilization began. If you're going to live in a community - a common organization of unrelated people for mutual benefit - this type of rule has been in place for the well-being of everyone, no matter if the social mores are based on a good/evil dichotomy, or of a more forgiving "legal rights" based society.
Basically, unless you're living in a very small, isolated plantation society where only those few "owners" benefit and everyone else - from the overseers and "house servants" to the field hands are disposable, the golden rule is critical for a healthy society. Even feudal systems recognized that those who toiled could only take so much; mercy and a consistent form of equal justice is the only function that saved those few on top from the rage of those they treated worse than dirt.
Newcomers/Strangers may be enemies, but once they were established within the social structure, it was imperative that even those who might fall out of the system was treated justly and fairly within those rules. That the law was applied equally no matter the station of the people under that law.

It's not a TV show where after an hour or so, the "good guys" get rewarded, the "bad guys" get their just rewards, and everything just fades away into the static background if it's not needed anymore; it's real life of many colors and concerns that continues even after one's own particular chapter of his/her life story goes on to the next. And somehow, a lot of Americans seem to be emotionally stuck in TV-land, where they are the heroes of their own series, and their personal "now" or immediate environment is the only thing important in the whole world.

I don't know how to fix a problem like this other than with education. Especially when the people with power and money seem not to care that the general public is slipping out of reality, because it's profitable to them in the short term.

Haele

[procon]

2. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Too many people are sent to prison for ridiculous things and trumped up charges, as well as unjust and outdated laws that serve no other purpose than revenge. In any case, once they have served their time, their debt to society is paid and the state should not continue to penalize them beyond that.

When are these numbskull politicians going to learn that they can't keep pounding people into the ground when they're already down and out, and still expect them to become a productive members of society.

[dembotoz]

3. Never about a second chance. All about creation of an underclass

[PatrickforO]

5. You know, I've never really understood why the oligarchs would want to create an underclass.

Why is this desirable in a world where we gauge success through the demand for goods and services. An underclass is a drag on the economy, not to mention the horrible and unjust human suffering.

[dembotoz]

6. They don't vote, they don't apply for services, they don't have the same rights in the court

List goes on

[Cal33]

7. Having had a criminal record would also make it very difficult to find a job. For

those who don't have any family to help out, what's left is homelessness and
starvation. It's exactly these people who need all the help they can get.
Cutting them off completely would only cause them to steal and rob ..... just
to stay alive.

No wonder their recidivism rate is high. The present laws should be revised.

[KamaAina]

8. San Francisco recently "banned the box"

the one on employment applications that you're supposed to check if you have a criminal record. We're trying to get that done statewide, but have made little headway as yet.

[Cal33]

9. I wish more states would also get started.