San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, August 7, 1998
Prisons Get $6 Million for Reporting Welfare Recipients
California leads in bounty earned from new system
AP, Washington
State prisons and local jails across the nation have earned more than $6.2 million in bounties from the Social Security Administration for catching 17,280 inmates who were collecting welfare benefits while behind bars.
In the 15 months between April 1, 1997, and July 1, 1998, California led the nation in the number of inmates reported, 2,908, and total bounty payments, $991,200, according to federal figures released yesterday.
Forty-eight states reported at least six beneficiary inmates, the District of Columbia caught one, and Vermont and Wyoming had none.
Prisoners are not allowed to receive Supplemental Security Income or Social Security payments. In the past, recipients essentially were trusted to report themselves to the federal government upon being convicted of a crime.
The 1996 federal overhaul of the welfare system created a voluntary incentive program for corrections officials. A jail or prison gets $400 from the Social Security Administration if it reports a welfare recipient's arrival within 30 days and if that report results in the prisoner being removed from benefit rolls.
The reward is $200 if the report is made between 30 and 90 days of a prisoner's arrival.
"This system is really brand new," said Representative E. Clay Shaw, R-Fla. "It's only been up and running for 15 months, and many state and local prison officials are not yet aware of it. But let me tell you, it does work."
Shaw and California Representative Wally Herger, R-Marysville, wrote the bounty provision.
The system is intended to prevent cases like that of William Bonin, California's "freeway killer," who collected disability checks for mental illness until his execution in 1996. Only after the funeral director reported his death, as is routine, did the Social Security Administration realize it had paid benefits to Bonin during his 14 years on death row.
His mother later said she received $75,000 of her son's Social Security checks and used it to pay the mortgage on her home, not knowing her son was not supposed to be getting the money.
Herger said a California sheriff brought the issue to his attention by wondering why inmates had so much money at the start of each month. Herger learned that the federal government has no mechanism to determine whether a welfare recipient is imprisoned.
"The bottom line is, crime should not pay, and evidently it did so in the past," Herger said.
In all but the rarest cases, welfare checks are sent to an inmate's house rather to the prison, so corrections officials do not see them. But participating law enforcers send names of all new inmates to the Social Security Administration, which looks for matches in its database of beneficiaries.
The Social Security Administration began in 1995 to crack down on other government benefits to inmates, like those paid to retirees.
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