Prisoners Receiving Social Security and Other Federal Retirement, Disability, and Education Benefits

Gao ID: HRD-82-43 July 22, 1982

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO estimated the number of incarcerated felons receiving social security and other cash benefits from various federal programs. Initial GAO estimates on the number of prisoner beneficiaries receiving benefits from Social Security Administration (SSA) and Veterans Administration (VA) programs resulted in Congress enacting legislation in 1980 to exclude certain benefits to prisoners.

GAO estimated that before the 1980 amendments: (1) about 1.4 percent of the incarcerated felons were receiving social security disability benefits of approximately $17 million a year; (2) about 1 percent were receiving VA disability compensation of approximately $8 million a year; and (3) about 1.3 percent were receiving VA education benefits of approximately $14 million a year. Prisoners were also receiving cash benefits from other similar federal programs not addressed by the amendments, including 0.4 percent who were receiving social security retirement or survivor benefits of approximately $4 million a year. Other prisoners were receiving cash benefits from the federal needs-based programs of Supplemental Security Income and veterans pensions. SSA and VA will not be able to identify prisoner beneficiaries completely until accurate social security numbers (SSN) are available for all prisoners. States varied widely in the completeness and accuracy of this information and could improve their documentation in coordination with the SSA validation process. GAO also estimated that about 4 percent of the prisoners were receiving postsecondary education funded through Pell Grants. The amounts varied but, because of tuition waivers, some grants were higher than the fees schools actually charged the prisoners.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Joseph F. Delfico Team: General Accounting Office: Human Resources Division Phone: (202) 512-7215


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