Sex Predators Collecting Education Dollars

Your tax dollars are working, indeed.

Just ask James Sturtz, the thrice convicted sex offender that is receiving Pell Grants for continuing his education while he is locked up in a predator's treatment center. The pedophile rapist would not be eligible for the grants if his butt was still sitting in prison because guidelines specifically disallow that abuse, but once predators are transferred into treatment facilities the doors to Uncle Sam's coffers swing wide open.

The AP and Lansing State Journal report:

Prison inmates are ineligible for Pell Grants under a 1994 law. Students convicted of certain drug offenses are also ineligible. But sexual predators qualify once they are transferred from prison to treatment centers.

"This is the most insane waste of taxpayer money that I have seen in my eight years in Congress," said Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla., who is pushing to stop the practice. "It is a national embarrassment that we are wasting taxpayer dollars for pedophiles and rapists to take college courses while hardworking young people from lower-class families are flipping hamburgers to pay for college."

Moreover, some institutions report that sex offenders are putting the financial aid to questionable uses by buying such things as clothes, a DVD player and music CDs - sometimes, after they have dropped out of school. Pell Grants can legally be put toward expenses that are education-related. But the unused portion of a grant is supposed to be repaid when someone withdraws from school.

Wow, hard to believe that convicted sex offenders, already locked up in treatment centers, wouldn't feel obligated to repay the unused portion of a grant.

Of course, there is another side of the story too, this one held by those cut from a more liberal cloth.

Some Democratic members of Congress and others say it would be counterproductive to put up a barrier to education for sex offenders who are trying to rehabilitate themselves.

"These are people who we want to prepare to go into the communities. They need to have access to educational programs," Richards said. "I think the numbers of committed persons aren't so large they would significantly preclude other citizens from taking advantage of educational support. To preclude them seems mean-spirited to me."

This is the sort of thing that happens when liberals want to fund their own pet charities with the dollars contributed by others.

Call me mean spirited.