Barriers to Re-Entry for Convicted Drug Offenders

Individuals who are convicted of drug felonies or have drug use histories face a wide spectrum of punitive policies that limit their access to social services. Not surprisingly, these policies disproportionately affect poor people of color and their families, with the burden falling most harshly on women. Here are some such barriers.

§ Tenants who apply for public housing can be denied admission if they have been convicted of a felony drug offense or if they are in a drug treatment program and are currently known to be using illegal drugs.

§ The federal "One-Strike" eviction policy allows public housing agencies or Section 8 landlords to evict a tenant or any guest or "other person under the tenant’s control" who is involved in "drug-related criminal activity" on or off public housing premises.

§ In 1998, the Higher Education Act was amended to prohibit anyone with a drug conviction from receiving federal financial aid for post-secondary education. Under the law, a student who has been convicted of any offense under any federal or state law involving the possession or sale of a controlled substance is not eligible to receive any grant, loan, or work assistance.

§ In the 2001-2002 school year, 48,629 students were formally denied aid for some or all of the school year. To date, approximately 92,841 students have been denied access to financial aid because of this provision.

§ Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) has introduced a bill--H.R. 685--that would repeal this policy as one of its three major priority areas. The bill currently has 39 co-sponsors. In addition to these efforts, student governments and schools have begun to protest this policy. As of April 2002, Hampshire, Swarthmore College and Yale University have agreed to replace the federal aid lost under this policy.

§ Any individual with a drug felony conviction is permanently barred from receiving cash benefits or food stamps.

§ Each state can "opt out" of enforcing this ban, or modify its enforcement. As of March 2002, 21 states have the full ban in place-denying to people with felony drug convictions benefits for life.

§ Eleven states and the District of Columbia have completely opted out of the ban, and 18 other states have modified the ban either by allowing benefits dependent upon drug treatment, denying benefits only for sales convictions, or by placing a time limit on the ban.

§ Convicted drug offenders are denied the right to vote in states throughout the country, impacting their right to participate as full citizens both inside and outside of prison.

§ In forty-six states and the District of Columbia, criminal disenfranchisement laws deny the vote to all convicted adults in prison; thirty-two states also disenfranchise felons on parole; twenty-nine disenfranchise those on probation; fourteen states prevent ex-offenders who have fully served their sentences from voting; ten of the states disenfranchise all ex-felons for life, including: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wyoming.

§ As a result, 1.4 million African-American men, or 13 percent of the African-American adult male population, are disenfranchised.

§ The Adoptive and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) accelerates the termination of parental rights and prevents individuals with certain convictions (including drug offences) from becoming foster or adoptive parents. By 1999, every state had passed legislation that mirrors or is tougher than this federal standard.

§ Within the past few years, many states have also begun testing newborns for drugs and terminating parental rights at childbirth if the baby tests positive. Such policies have a significant racial and class bias. There is overwhelming evidence that hospitals subject poor women and newborns of color to these practices at disproportionately higher rates. One positive drug test can send a child into foster care and force a mother to fulfill a reunification procedure that is often complex and onerous.