Over 1.1 million COVID-19 stimulus checks, totaling over $1.3 billion, were sent out to incarcerated people across the United States, data from the Internal Revenue Service revealed.
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The $1.3 billion figure includes economic impact payments and does not account for recovery rebate credits, another form of COVID-19 relief given during the pandemic, according to a letter the IRS sent to Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) obtained by the Washington Examiner. Some 163,000 recipients were serving life sentences.
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“It’s outrageous that those who inflicted pain on a family or community by committing a crime received a single dime from the government during the pandemic. If anything, the funds should have gone to the victims who would have been better served,” Bacon said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Of the checks doled out, 156,000 were sent to prisoners at the federal level and 982,000 to prisoners at the state level, per the IRS. Stimulus money was given to prisoners via checks, direct deposits, and debit cards.
During the crafting of the third COVID-19 relief legislation, Bacon and other Republicans sought to add language to prevent stimulus money from getting delivered to prisoners. A slew of Republicans had ripped Democrats for rejecting an amendment to the American Rescue Plan to cut off economic impact payments from prisoners.
The $1.9 trillion piece of legislation entailed the third round of pandemic-related financial relief checks to people who earned $75,000 or less and $150,000 for married couples. Notably, prior relief packages, such as the CARES Act and Consolidated Appropriations Act, which were approved by President Donald Trump, also doled out checks to prisoners, CNN reported.
“When we discovered that incarcerated individuals previously received stimulus checks, an amendment was introduced to block them in the second round, and Democrats voted against it,” Bacon added. “It’s disgusting, and Democrats who voted against the amendment should be ashamed.”
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Government watchdog groups have estimated that pandemic relief packages were rife with a tidal wave of fraud. So far, Justice Department officials have slapped charges against people totaling over $1 billion in fraud, with additional cases encompassing $6 billion and higher still pending, the New York Times reported.
A Labor Department watchdog has estimated there may have been “at least” $163 billion in waste from COVID-19-enhanced unemployment payments alone, the Washington Post reported.
