Altimont owns Carmen’s Corner Store in Hagerstown, Maryland, a community where around 20 percent of people rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy their groceries. But a federal agency decided that Altimont can never accept SNAP as a form of payment at Carmen’s.
That decision isn’t because Altimont has done anything wrong as a business owner, but rather because of unrelated crimes from 2004, for which he’s already served his time.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) permanently bans anyone with drug, alcohol, tobacco, or firearms convictions from participating in the SNAP program—a harsher punishment than the agency dishes out to those who have actually defrauded the program. That’s not just irrational, it’s also unconstitutional, which is why Altimont teamed up with our organization, the Institute for Justice (IJ), to file a federal lawsuit against the agency on Tuesday.
If we aren’t comfortable striking a person’s offenses from public record once they’re released from prison, then clearly we did a shit job of rehabilitating them and should’ve kept them locked up for longer.
But see, that’s the thing. It’s not rehabilitation. It’s just punishment. Of course, the punishment doesn’t end after they got out of jail. We always have to make sure it continues in as many facets of life as possible because suffering is the point. Make people suffer enough and they’ll never do another bad thing ever again. It’s perfect. Don’t you know suffering churns out happy, productive, well adjusted adults?