The penalties also include a lifetime ban on receiving welfare or food stamps for those convicted of drug felonies, prohibitions against getting certain jobs in plumbing, education and other fields, and the loss of the right to vote, for life in some states. New York Times, December 28, 2002
In the 1990’s, the Christian government of the United States put its heart into getting “tough on crime”, because they loved everyone. One of the things they did was pass a law that deprives convicted criminals of access to social programs intended to help people trapped in the cycle of poverty and social dysfunction.
Well, who are they intended to help? I don’t know. The U.S. government often acts as if it should be a crime to be poor, period. But let’s think about this. Most robberies are committed by people who need money. Most people who need money are poor. If a poor person commits a crime, steals money, because, after all, they have none, then let’s make sure they are always poor.
Not that welfare amounts to anything that could be interpreted as helping anyone get out of poverty in the first place, of course. But the logic is clear. The way to get rid of poverty is not by sharing the fabulous wealth most of us possess, or by making it easier for the poor to access education and social services, but by making your life on earth as hellish as possible, and one of the things we can do to ensure that is to make sure that you will never get any help again if you steal once.
States can opt out of the lifetime ban on welfare, but only two, New York and Connecticut, have.
The law is the brainchild of former Senator Phil Gramm, now vice chairman of UBS Warbuck, the investment bank. Well, we knew he wasn’t going to join Habitat for Humanity after his little lucrative stay in the Senate. It’s payback time for Mr. Gramm. After years of passing laws that are monumentally beneficial to the rich and to corporate interests, the corporate interests have put him more directly on their payroll. And it’s probably cheaper for them than it was when they had to contribute to his election campaigns instead to keep him in servitude.
In many states, convicted felons are barred from jobs like plumbing, teaching, health care, or security. I’m not making this up. In Pennsylvania, theft of two library books is sufficient to ban you for life from working in a nursing home. A man who was convicted of possession of marijuana (and received probation) when he was 18 recently discovered that, after 30 years of working in the health care field, he could not get a new job in the same field because of that previous conviction.
This is because our leaders love Jesus.
“The consequences affect millions of Americans. Thirteen million felons who are in prison or have done their time live in the United States, according to an estimate by Christopher Uggen, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. That is almost 7 percent of the adult population.”
[2011-03: that figure is now 10%]