The law also ignores the fact that people can change. People of color and people living in or near poverty are disproportionately affected, worsening long-running disparities, she said. South Carolina is the only state that still fully enforces it.Īt the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center in Columbia, attorney Sue Berkowitz assists families like Butler’s whose lives have been upended by this law. Another 22 states have imposed watered-down versions of this law, Smith said. The bill allowed states to opt out of enforcing that lifetime ban on nutrition assistance, and most states did so, choosing to not punish people by withholding food. “We know now these types of policies don’t have any public safety value. “We punish people in every possible way, thinking this will deter people from commiting drug offenses,” said Grant Smith, deputy director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. But advocates say it only succeeds in undermining a person’s ability to start over. The ostensible goal was to help only the people who were most in need, with public funds well spent on their behalf, as defined by Congress. Crucially, lawmakers also stipulated that a person holding a felony drug conviction would be banned for life from receiving SNAP benefits. The law diminished access and affordability of child care, supplemental income for families raising children with disabilities, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (or TANF), as well as nutrition assistance, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act as part of what became known as welfare reform during the Clinton administration. Part of the Farm Bill, the 2023 RESTORE Act would repeal the nearly three-decade-old federal law that has allowed states to deny nutrition assistance to people with felony drug convictions for their lifetimes. A bipartisan bill now before Congress could potentially end that harm if lawmakers can agree to fund it. “We know now these types of policies don’t have any public safety value.”īutler’s family is one of many who have felt the repercussions of laws designed long ago to punish people leaving jails and prisons – even after they have completed their sentence – if their records include certain offenses. How do you expect someone who qualifies for food stamps to pay that much back?” “‘We’re going to help you out because your family is in need of help,’ but then they found out he was a felon. Two weeks later, another letter arrived, saying she owed the state nearly $10,000. Then, in June 2022, Butler received a letter from the South Carolina Department of Social Services, saying her family had been granted SNAP benefits in error because her husband’s felony drug conviction forbade his household from participating in the program. For two years, her family, including two sons, now ages 11 and 16, received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and were recertified along the way. But that boost allowed her “to go through a grocery store and not have to add up every single item” she placed in her shopping cart to ensure she did not exceed her budget. She was already earning $16 an hour managing a Salvation Army store near Greenville, South Carolina, to support her family of four. South Carolina started to give her $800 a month for food, and she was thrilled. When Aubrie Butler applied for nutrition benefits a few years ago, she was honest about her husband’s 2006 felony drug conviction, thinking, “All they can say is ‘no.’”
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