Welfare Ban for Drug Felons Harms Children, Study Says

By GREG KRIKORIAN

Feb. 28, 2002 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Chalon Smith, whose years of addiction began when she was barely 18, can tell you the day she quit drinking and using drugs. It was Oct. 24, 1999, she says, the day after her arrest for possession of crack cocaine.

Smith, 29, also can tell you the day she was released from prison: last Nov. 19, just in time for Thanksgiving.

But as she sits on the bed of a sober living house in Watts, Smith cannot tell you how she, her teenage daughter and grandson are going to survive. Since her release from prison, Smith, like thousands of women with felony drug convictions, has been banned from receiving government aid for herself and her family under the provisions of the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act.

“If you are going to deny me cash, fine,” she said. “But don’t deny my kids. They shouldn’t be suffering because of my mistakes.”

Smith is among more than 92,000 women--40% of them in California--who have been barred from receiving funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program because of their drug convictions, according to a yearlong study released today.

The report by the Sentencing Project of Washington, D.C., a nonprofit liberal advocacy group, also found that the ban places more than 135,000 children at risk because their mothers are without access to welfare aid ranging from cash grants to food stamps.

“The lifetime welfare ban ... makes the possibility of women returning to their communities as productive members more difficult than before their conviction, and in some cases improbable,” the study says.

Individual states can opt out of the federal ban, and so far, eight, including New York, Michigan and Ohio, have done so, according to the study.

The remaining states either enforce the lifetime ban, adhere to a shorter ban or tie the resumption of benefits to drug testing.

California is one of 22 states that impose the full ban, and as a result, 37,825 women have been declared permanently ineligible for welfare benefits since 1996, according to the study.

That, critics say, defies logic.

“If you commit a murder and get out of prison, you would still be eligible for assistance,” said Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles). “But if you are sent to prison for drug possession, you cannot get it.”

Last year, Goldberg authored legislation to lift the ban in California, allowing those convicted of drug possession to take part in welfare-to-work programs and receive welfare aid if they participate in drug treatment.

But the measure, after winning passage in the Legislature, was vetoed by Gov. Gray Davis on grounds that the state should not expand eligibility for benefits at a time of “economic uncertainty.”

“People say, ‘Well, the woman was doing drugs.’ And OK, I’m not happy about that,” Goldberg said.

“But why would you use that to not let her kids have enough food to eat, or a house to live in, or to provide the mother some job training” after her release from prison? she said.

Despite such complaints about the law, a top aide of the ban’s author, U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), said he does not foresee the law being changed.

“In order to reverse the Gramm Amendment, the burden will be on some member of the Congress to convince a majority of his colleagues that the House and Senate should restore welfare benefits to convicted drug dealers,” said Larry Neal, Gramm’s deputy chief of staff. “That’s an especially heavy burden to bear because it doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”

The new study by the Sentencing Project says the number of California women barred from government aid is nearly four times the number affected in the next-largest state--Illinois--that imposes the full ban.

According to the report, the impact of the law in California is felt slightly more among whites than among women of color--19,168 white women, or 57% of the total, were convicted of felony drug offenses, compared with 8,471 black women and 7,772 Latinas.

Nationwide, the study found, 52% of the women affected by the ban are white.

At the 3-year-old Watts sober living center called A New Way of Life, founder and director Susan Brooks said that about one in three women have been barred from government aid because of drug convictions.

“The women who come here have had very abusive lives. And drugs may have been the way they coped with life,” said Brooks, 50, who was in prison for drug use almost half her adult life.

For Chalon Smith, the sudden end to welfare benefits comes at a time, she said, when she has kicked her addiction but is struggling to rebuild her family.

“I have a job at a beauty supply store ... but I barely make $100 a week,” Smith said.

In the next few days, she said, she has interviews for a second job at an oil refinery or as a telephone operator.

But until she finds more employment, Smith said, there is no way she can save the $615 a month she needs for an apartment that she can share with her daughter, 15, and her daughter’s infant son.

“The two [government assistance] checks I was expecting would be enough to move into a place,” Smith said.

Instead, Smith’s daughter and grandson are staying with a friend in Long Beach as she continues to live at the shelter in Watts--one of few in the area that accepts residents who cannot cover their basic expenses with government aid.

“I knew going to prison, life was not supposed to be easy for me. I’m not asking for it to be easy,” Smith said. “I’m just asking for a start.”

Patricia Allard, author of the national study, said that many states are reviewing their welfare bans for convicted drug users, although it is unclear how many ultimately will opt out.

There also is no indication that Congress or the Bush administration will lift the provision at the federal level when new welfare measures are enacted in the coming year.

As such, Allard said, the numbers of women and children affected by the ban “are going to grow. There is no two ways about it.”

“Losing your benefits when you need them the most,” Allard said, “is really imposing a life sentence of poverty on women and their children.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Welfare Ban

States where the most women have been denied welfare from 1996 to 1999 because of drug convictions:

1. California 37,825

2. Illinois* 10,298

3. Georgia 8,608

4. Missouri 6,429

5. Arkansas 5,132

6. Texas 4,700

7. Virginia 3,686