FindLaw Blotter: Data Processing Work Gives Inmates Access to Info - Prisons

As a result, the Social Security Administration has propose legislation urging Congress to pass a law that would make bar states from giving prisoners data processing work with personal identifying information.

Typically, states can end the practice or pass laws faster than federal lawmakers can deal with the problem.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is sponsor of a bill that would prohibit prisoners from handling Social Security data.

According to a recent federal audit, several states including Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia train prisoners for data processing work.

Some of these jobs access personal information while processing employee wage statements, student transcripts, tax files, and health care and labor claims forms.

In Kansas, an inmate was caught trying to steal names, birthdates and Social Security number while enrolled in a data entry training program, the audit found.

This has led Kansas correction officials to form a committee study the prison data entry programs more closely as they try to phase them out next year.

In 2005, California passed a law that forbids such programs there.

Currently, Social Security Administration officials are also considering directly appealing to states that allow the practice to ask them to stop.

Will someone please arrest me? Another day in the life... and this one REALLY sucked.

Career in Crisis: Career Center Chaos
By Elyssa Durant -
Available:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/elyssadurant/gGxh4C#

After being rejected from a job that pays $18,000 / year at the
women's prison, a job that pays $21,000 teaching Head Start, getting
fired from Red Lobster (because apparently, I am just not Red Lobster
"material" I decided to go to the Tennessee Career Center to take
advantage of their high speed internet, free printer paper, and ink…

I was hooked up with an excellent counselor earlier this afternoon.
He has two master's degrees-- one in Educational I Career Counseling,
and a second in counseling psychology. This is the guidance counselor
I have been asking for since..., well, since... I was in a school
long enough to have a guidance counselor, but I never got.

Because I simply refuse to take any more of those tests. Not really
an issue any more, since they clearly do not fit into my budget
anyway! Nope. I will not take 'em for Vanderbilt, and I will not
take 'em for law school. Not for Harvard, not for Tennessee, and I
most definitely will not take 'em for DaveCordray (and yes, Dave, you
are still in fact, such an asshole!)

Who gives a shit anymore??? If you told a me a fat bearded lady at the
circus could decide my fate and tell me what direction I should choose
next-- I would take it! and throw in a fat tip for being smart enough
to know that any answer-- no matter how grim, is far better than just
wandering aimlessly through life looking back on what might have
been-- at THIRTY! AT THIRTY! !

I wish I could say that after all this time I developed other ego
strengths and finally felt okay with whom I am, you know.... "just
being me." but I am sad to report that my "condition" (diagnosis) was
amazingly accurate and predictable. just like all the doctors said! I
wonder if they derive joy out of being right— if they crack open a
bottle of aged liquor in my father's office and say, "see, we told you
so. we told you their was nothing you could do. and so nothing he did.
By doing nothing and I do mean nothing-- the illness take will its
course, and I am now, in fact, nothing. Nothing costs nothing (at
least to him) and daddy made another fine investment, on the other
hand, nothing has drained every hope, fear, security— chance-- every
last breath from my body. I might have believed in me. And I know
I'm alive because a tear just rolled down the side of my cheek. I am
home.

I am the exact same 5 year old who needed to win the spelling bee. In
college, I was the one to set the curve, not just make it, break the
rules, and, break [them] I did. There is no glory in being second
best. Second smartest, second brightest, or second anything.

But I still have not learned, for some reason with all of my failures,
I am reminded of in so many ways. Me, myself watch them play out
every time I shut my eyes or open them. Yes- blink, sometimes I ask
myself, how did I get here? How did this happen? What happened to
all of the plans I made for myself~ where did they go? Where did I
go? Constantly replayed over and over and over again in my mind, 1
must be FUCK1NG CRAZY! But at this moment, here, even as I say the
words, I am not truly insane. 1 am merely in pain, what a tragedy
that those two words rhyme-- they ruin what could have been a very
profound misnomer of the human condition and the labels we hold so
dear.

And so my search for mediocrity continues, and I wait for it each and
every day, hoping it will find me beaten and worn from the stoma. All
of the storms, but damn-it it is still there. I still have questions
those damn elyssa questions that made all my professors so proud, damn
ideas, damn thoughts, damn hope.

My mother still calls me everyday to see if I went down to get food
stamps to feed myself, flick her, and her fucking things. Flick
diamonds and couture and fuck that life. I was here mom, the whole
god-damned time. Just not pretty enough with out any surgery. Not
pretty at all with all those damn scars,

I am the exact same 5 year old who needed to ACE the spelling bee, set
the curve, not just make it, break the rules, and, break. them I did.
There is no glory in being second best. Second smartest, second
brightest, or second anything. Being second sucks. it sucks every
god damned second of the day.

Goodnight my dear friends, lets all try to have sweet dreams. Pepe
awaits, as does Alanis and a pack of smokes that 1 can already taste.
I hope you all still love me. I do actually believe that I deserve
love and kindness despite the obvious fact that I am a royal pain in
the ass. I refuse to work in Burger King.

What could have been, what should have been-- what might have been if
you let me be

me.

When in Chinese, the word Crisis is composed of two characters: One
represents danger and the other represents opportunity...

JFK

________________________________________________________________
Elyssa Durant, Ed.M.
Nashville, Tennessee
Reply to: elyssa.durant@columbia.edu

"You may not care how much I know, but you don't know how much I care."

http://sanityforsuperheroes.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-processing-work-gives-i...

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/elyssadurant/gGxh4C

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