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Old Prisoners Denied Their Social Security

8-3-2009 National:

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

From time to time, I’ve written about the growing numbers of older prisoners now filling up the country’s prisons and jails, in a series of posts called Aging Behind Bars. Many of these prisoners receive inadquate health care and are subject to special forms of cruel and inhuman punishment that have to do with age–i.e. requiring people with bad arthritis to climb to the upper bunk to sleep, or making it next to impossible for inmates in wheelchairs to access parts of prisons available to younger people, even including something as simple as handicapped showers. Among the worst incidents described to me by a medical consultant were ill women forced to get out of bed at 3 am,then stand in lines to obtain medicine in one Alabama women’s prison.

Older prisoners are also often denied the Social Security they earned for years before being convicted of a crime. Lois Ahrens, who runs the indispenable Real Cost of Prisons Project, alerted me to the situation of David Hinman, a prisoner in Iowa. Now 65, he contributed to Social Security for years while he was in the “free-world.” He is not eligible for parole for a number years. Hinman writes:

Currently the government will not pay people in prison social security. I am speaking about paying social security to those who paid into the fund. Payment is based on what they paid in. Even though I am now 65 and paid into the fund, since I am in prison I am not allowed to collect unless I am released from prison. By not paying inmates the social security to which they are entitled, I believe this is in some manner, theft.

My question to readers is: should prison inmates who paid into social security and reached 65 be allowed to collected social security while incarcerated or not.

(You can write to David Hinman, #25374, Anamosa State Penitentiary, 406 North High Street, P.O. Box 10, Anamosa, IA 52205-0010.)

Asked about this situation, Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, the excellent magazine which tracks prison issues, wrote me:
Part of the problem I have with this is that someone can work their whole life, pay into Social Security, commit a crime at a later age, and go to prison for the rest of their life and never see a penny of the money they paid into SS. The lie used to justify this is prisoners have no need for money but that is not true. I think it is a backdoor way to trim the SS rolls. I think this is the exception. To put it into context, retirees can get their pensions in prison, veterans can get their VA benefits in prison. It follows that if you earn something you are entitled to it. It is not a freebie the government can take away because it doesn’t like you and that is exactly what they do here.

Wright attached an article from a 1998 isssue of Prison Legal News, describing a federal court decision on the subject, that sets the situation into the bleakest of terms.
The court of appeals for the Ninth circuit held that a statute denying Social Security benefits to prisoners is constitutional. Robert Butler is a 77 year old Nevada state prisoner. Butler was granted social security retirement benefits in 1983. He was later incarcerated and the Social Security Administration (SSA) determined he was not entitled to benefits while he was incarcerated pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 402(X). An administrative law judge affirmed the SSA’s decision. Butler filed suit in federal court and it was dismissed for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court of appeals affirmed. The appeals court noted that every court to consider the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 402(X), this includes the Second, Fourth, Eighth, Tenth and Eleventh circuits, had upheld the law. Congress has wide discretion in administering welfare resources. The court held that § 402(X)’s ban on social security benefits to prisoners does not violate constitutional guarantees to due process, equal protection and protection against ex post facto laws and bills of attainder. The court also held that Butler was provided with ample due process before his benefits were terminated because he participated in the SSA hearing by telephone. Since the statute leaves no room for agency discretion and the only fact issue was whether or not Butler was a felon doing time in prison, the telephone hearing was sufficient to safeguard Butler’s due process interest in his social security benefits. See: Butler v. Apfel , 144 F.3d 622 (9th Cir. 1998).

..Source.. by James Ridgeway, the Unsilent Generation

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