Punishment Delayed

This column was written by Vince Beiser.

When the wind and rain finally subsided, they found themselves trapped, the lower level flooded to the ceiling. Rescued from their porch by a passing boat, the family wound up spending two nights sleeping on a highway overpass and three more in front of the infamous Superdome, surviving on water and MREs handed out by emergency workers.

That, however, turned out to be some of the last help the family would get from the federal government. Though they are now homeless and broke, the entire family is cut off from federal housing and welfare assistance – because six years ago, Samson's husband, Arnold Battiste, was convicted for possession of crack.

"We lost everything," says Samson, 31, a former New Orleans school bus driver who is now being sheltered with her family by a church in Denton, Texas. "We went through so much trauma, and now we come here and learn we can't get housing?"

Samson and her family are among possibly thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who are being denied help because of past drug convictions. Tough-on-crime laws passed mostly in the 1990s bar drug felons – though not other kinds of offenders – from receiving a range of federal assistance, from student loans to cash welfare, now known as Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF). The issue is pressing enough that several members of Congress introduced a bill early this month to temporarily restore such aid to residents of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, who have had their lives disrupted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"Parents who have lost everything and are struggling to feed themselves and their family will be denied TANF and food stamps; students who … could continue their education in another school … will be denied student loans; and entire families that have lost everything in the disasters will be denied housing – all due to the federal bans for a past drug conviction," said Democratic Representative Robert C. Scott when he introduced the bill on November 2. The Elimination of Barriers for Katrina Victims Act, he went on, "would allow families affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita a chance to put their lives back together through the same means as other victims who suddenly lost their homes and livelihood through no fault of their own."

Nearly 2.5 million people affected by Katrina and Rita have already applied to FEMA for help. How many of them have a drug conviction somewhere in their past? No one knows, but given the enthusiasm with which the southern states wage the war on drugs, the number is undoubtedly considerable. Over 178,000 people are currently locked up or on probation or parole for drug crimes in the states covered by Scott's bill. And that number leaves out the many thousands more who have completed their sentences but whose convictions remain on record.

A recent report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that the aid cutoffs were hammering tens of thousands of Americans even before the hurricanes. The report estimated that 41,000 students were denied college assistance during the 2003-2004 academic year because of drug convictions. The GAO's researchers only received data from 15 of the nation's 3,000 public housing agencies, but just in that handful found that almost 1,500 families had been denied housing because one of their members had a drug record. The aid bans, the report notes, disproportionately fall on women, who are more likely than male offenders to be both poor and responsible for children.

Cutting desperate hurricane survivors off from public support is likely to boomerang, says Bill Piper, national affairs director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based drug policy reform organization. "With all the stress, the temptation for drug users to relapse is very high. Others may turn to selling drugs for money. We're concerned that the South is a ticking time bomb where tens of thousands may get caught up in the criminal justice system," he says.

Piper has so far heard of only a few specific cases of hurricane victims being denied federal benefits, but says that is likely because most evacuees are still getting short-term emergency aid. "When that runs out, and people need to go to additional federal agencies, we expect to start hearing many more reports," says Piper.

States have the leeway to soften or entirely opt out of the bans on TANF and food stamps, and most have done so in recent years. Louisiana, for instance, allows drug offenders to apply for these benefits after a year's waiting period, provided they submit to ongoing drug testing. But in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, which have plenty of their own victims and are now home to many Louisiana evacuees, the bans apply for life. (Texas has, at least, waived the ban on emergency food stamps – but not TANF – for Katrina evacuees.)

Evidently recognizing that help for drug users isn't exactly an easy sell, Scott has narrowly tailored his bill: it applies only to the hurricane-affected states and expires after three years. Committing a new drug crime would still get a person cut off. (Sad news, undoubtedly, for the three Louisiana evacuees who were recently arrested in Georgia for dealing crack out of a motel room paid for by FEMA.)

The bill has 10 co-sponsors and is supported by dozens of civil rights and drug reform groups, including the ACLU, the NAACP, and Human Rights Watch. Still, it faces an uphill battle in the Republican-dominated Congress. "Right now, the prospects aren't good," concedes Piper.

Meanwhile, Samson is taking computer classes while she and Battiste look for jobs and keep the children fed with donations from Denton's First Baptist Church. She doesn't know what she'll do come February 1, however, when the family has to leave the church-owned house where they're staying.
"My husband made a mistake in the past, and he admits it," says Samson. "But if you pay your debt to society like he did, it shouldn't come back to haunt you like this."

Vince Beiser is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer specializing in criminal justice issues. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and Mother Jones.

By Vince Beiser
Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect, 5 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. All rights reserved