Welfare fraud: 'Damned if you do, doomed if you don't'
........Welfare recipients are responsible for notifying caseworkers of any changes to their household size or income, but Candice had only reported her marriage a year after the wedding, following the arrival of their new son. The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) determined David’s income was too high for the family to receive benefits. The income threshold for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, is about $35,000 a year for a family of five, and does not factor in custody payments. One caseworker suggested to Candice that she get a divorce.
“When she told me about that it was like somebody freaking stabbed me. I thought he was hitting on my wife,” David says. He stopped working overtime, but his base monthly pay was still about $150 too much. “That’s when the 45-day deal came in,” David says. Separated single parents with little means of their own can rely on public assistance to escape undesirable relationships. A caseworker said if Candice and the children lived apart from David for 45 days at a time, it would appear on paper that the couple had split. They certainly didn’t like the idea, but David and Candice needed help buying food, so Candice and the kids moved in with her mother.
Investigators follow up on tips that arrive from caseworkers, public hotlines or automated systems that troubleshoot for suspicious activity, but Perry Wheeler, the president of the New York Welfare Fraud Investigators Association, told me, “When it comes to hotline calls, you’re looking at 2 or 3 percent of them are actually fraud. A lot of it is your neighbors are pissed at you or your relatives are pissed at you and they’re trying to get you in trouble.” Welfare recipients sign away many of their Fourth Amendment privacy rights when entering the system, allowing investigators to conduct undercover operations and stakeouts, or drop in unannounced to inspect a home with little probable cause. If signs of an unreported partner are seen, or if it looks like a recipient is operating any kind of under-the-table business, no matter how dire the underlying condition of poverty, investigators can make an arrest. Fastidiousness is highly incentivized: State coffers retain whatever portion of TANF block grants not spent assisting the poor and up to 35% of SNAP funds recouped from fraud investigations.
All suspects are given the opportunity to contest charges at an administrative hearing. Most waive it, if only to get the whole ordeal over with. A first offense usually leads to a six-month disqualification; it’s a year for a second offense, and a lifetime ban for a third offense. Restitution is an inevitable penalty, as are reduced benefits in the future, since few people can afford to pay back their debts outright.
Though fraud occurs in a minuscule proportion of cases, welfare recipients are made to live in constant fear of the criminal justice system. Applicants confront a menu of options, from school lunches to SNAP to Medicaid to Section 8 housing, and in each state, every program has different eligibility rules and different requirements for submitting information. Waiting in the wings are investigation units policing sub-regional jurisdictions with an array of enforcement tactics. The result is a system that, at times, can seem remote and inaccessible, and then, like in the case of David and Candice, fiercely personal. As Gustafsen told me, “It’s Kafkaesque. You have offices and investigators with a lot discretion targeting an already stigmatized population.”.............
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/28/the-hand-that-feedsyou.html
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