Ganking Us For Our Stimulus
by Ricardo Ferrell
June 1, 2021Last year, on September 24th, a federal judge in California ordered the IRS to provide the CARES ACT payments that were distributed last spring to incarcerated people who would be eligible if they were on the outside.
Some had to file a claim, as others were to get the funds automatically into their accounts. Under Scholl v. Mnuchin, many incarcerated men & women across the U.S. started receiving COVID-19 stimulus checks.
In October 2020, the Michigan Department of Corrections began handing out 1040 Forms to prisoners wanting to apply for the stimulus funds. In the federal judge’s order it specifically ruled the Internal Revenue Service couldn’t withhold the stimulus checks from incarcerated people simply because they were behind bars, which ended a legal battle over whether prisoners could actually receive the money. Lawyers who represented the two main plaintiffs said, the class action lawsuit which was filed on behalf of incarcerated individuals would likely make the stimulus funds available to 1.5 million people in prison.
Why take away monies that prisoners used to challenge their wrongful convictions? Hell, I know many like myself who gave portions of their stimulus checks to help pay for their child’s education, help family & friends with their bills and to avoid evictions. We definitely contributed in a big way to the stimulation of the economy. Why try to paint this negative picture of prisoners unduly receiving money from the IRS, as if to imply that folks in the streets are suffering because those in prison are somehow living it up off the government? So, the state comes in and targets the Trust Accounts of several inmates, never taking into consideration how us incarcerated individuals had the humanity and compassion to give.
Let’s tell the real story about what’s happening here, the state is attempting again to portray us as these vicious, heartless, throwaways that are useless to society. We’re constantly dehumanized by a false narrative given to an unconscious society who are told these terrible lies and horrible stories about those who stand convicted of crimes. But what about the likely hundreds or maybe thousands who sit in prison wrongfully convicted of crimes their innocent of, or do it matter? In recent years, we’ve seen many innocent projects, and conviction integrity units work to free wrongfully convicted people. The following is a few of those who were found to be innocent: Richard Phillips served 45 years and was proven innocent, Ledura Watkins served 42 years before DNA evidence pointing toward someone else helped to free him, Raymond Gray served 48 years even though another man confessed to the crime, and many more like Darrell Siggers, Desmond Ricks, Bernard Howard, Lacino Hamilton, Justly Johnson, Ramon Ward, Larry Smith, Kenneth Nixon, and Gilbert Poole, all were in prison and had their convictions set aside. My point here is, none of these men convicted of murders they didn’t commit, shouldn’t have been in prison anyway.
Last week, WXYZ News in Detroit ran a story called ‘Convicted Killers Receive Stimulus Checks’. In the report, two black men that have been convicted in homicides MDOC mugshots were plastered on the television screen and said to have received $3,200 in stimulus payments to their Trust Accounts, in which Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Office is vigorously pursuing to confiscate by freezing their accounts, and of at least 125 others who have been convicted of murder. However, there are likely thousands more who’s accounts are being flagged for some type of restitution, debt or room and board. This action is being taken under an antiquated 1963 Reimbursement Act. The Attorney General’s Office is going after prisoners who have more than $1,500 in their Trust Accounts. However, monies earned on work assignments aren’t subject to reimbursing. Also, money received as a result of a lawsuit cannot be confiscated. The stimulus payments resulted from litigation in a lawsuit. Therefore, the Attorney General and the MDOC are illegally confiscating funds from a lawsuit and appears to be in violation of a federal judge’s order.
The state seeks to do a money grab from people who before the COVID-19 stimulus checks were barely getting by and had problems purchasing necessities like hygiene products, vitamins, and healthy foods with wages from work assignments. For example, Quentin Jones struggled monthly to juggle his porter pay, where he was receiving a messily .42¢ per day, which equaled $8.82 each month with choosing to buy hygienic necessaties, over-the-counter medications to help with chronic back pain, or get himself a few healthy food items that are unbelievably high priced on the store list, with an additional tax.
What the Attorney General and MDOC are missing, isn’t an opportunity to seek reimbursement, but rather affording a fundamental fairness to incarcerated people who have suffered enormously due to the devastating impact of the deadly coronavirus in all 29 of Michigan’s prisons, where over 26,000 of the 32,000 prisoners contracted this life threatening disease and claimed the lives of nearly 150 prisoners since last year. The focus of the state shouldn’t be on how best to gank (essentially rob) prisoners of the funds ordered by a federal judge they could have under the CARES Act, but work to assure these monies are protected and not unlawfully confiscated based on a false premise that prisoners have and are receiving payments from the IRS they some how shouldn’t be getting. That notion is ludicrous in several ways, the state claim it cost taxpayers between $36,000 – $40,000 each year to house each prisoner. However, 20% of the state’s general fund goes to the corrections budget, which spells a wasteful pork barrel type of spending because majority of the $2.2 billion annual budget goes to employees salaries, benefits and abusive overtime. FOLLOW THE MONEY!!!