A limited review of fugitives and inmates inappropriately receiving public assistance

Some fugitives and inmates are in appropriately receiving public assistance benefits. Although our review was limited to data matches for a one-month time period (January 2012) and one supervising agency (Utah Department of Corrections), we found the following: 414 public assistance benefits were active for 281 fugitives and 209 public assistance benefits were active for 179 inmates. These results represent about 2 percent of the incarcerated population and 25 percent of the fugitive population supervised by the Utah Department of Corrections (UDC). Concerns raised in this report would likely be much greater if a public assistance match was performed on all fugitives and inmates in the state. For example, our match was limited to the 1,100 fugitives supervised by the UDC.