I was actually looking into this a few months ago and you'll never believe the misinformation that is loaded on the web. The first few articles and answers I read were telling me that as an ex-convict with past drug felony convictions that I was shit out of luck, some saying getting into school, some saying getting federal financial assistance.
Well I knew the getting into school with a conviction was possible because I did it in the past with charges on my record before I dropped out, so I continued looking into the pell grant issue as well and finally found the truth. First off let, me introduce my story: I was actually a bright kid, A.G English, A.G Math, and A.G Science from 3rd grade up. But when I got into middle school I started into the party scene and making the step into illegal pharmaceutical street pharmacist. Started making a killing and by the time I was in highschool was holding close to 10,000 dollars.
Then got out of school in 1998 and took it to new heights, I was running the streets and handing out work to a bunch of my homies living the good life, stacking up my dough, spending like crazy with a little nest egg around 80,000. Finally got my first charge when I was around 23 (set up by a bitch I was seeing [most dealer downfalls come from their bitch for real]), but she didn't get me for any trafficking charges being I didn't let her get that close to my shit. But I got hit up for PWISD Marijuana, Cocaine, and MDMA. Along with about 7 other felonies that were state add-ons (like keeping vehicle for use of selling and manufacturing charges) that got dropped through my plea aggreement after paying $3000 to a lawyer for my 1st offense. He got me the 7 other felonies dropped and I took the 3 felony PWISD charges.
I got 2 years probation, and for the first year I was doing the straight and narrow. I didn't get job for the first year, being my dad told my probation officer I was working for him at his business and she was actually cool as shit. I wanted to go to college so I went to Coastal Carolina Community College and went to sign up. Their policy is you have to wait a full year after conviction before you can attend so I did that. Started back to school and tried to get a job (being I was still spending like I had it and my eggnest was looking pretty grim, like $5000). Nobody would hire my ass for real. So little to say I finally took my ass back to grinding.
This time I kept it simple though, just dank nugs. Little to say I dropped back out of school and got my own apartment again and a new girl (who I've been with for almost 6 years now, the love of my life) who kept on me to get out of the game, but I won't lie, I'm stubborn and wouldn't listen. Around 2005 got back into the yae-yo business with just hooking up a few friends, then around 2006 started setting up a few friends to hustle for me and had a nice egg around 30,000 back into savings and spending about 3000-5000 a month on opiates for mine and my girls newly acclaimed addiction and probably another 5000 on toys, movies, clothes, parties, and going out.
Then it caught up to me again at the end of 2008. Someone gave me a counterfiet 20 dollar bill in a club that was dark, so when I went to pay for a beer they called the cops. They arrived and took me outside to search me and found 5 percocet 10s (the schoolbuses) and charged me with felony trafficking charges of heroin (being opiates are classed together) and felony possession of marijuana (since there was like a lil over a half-pound of weed in my glove compartment). Well this was my second strike and trafficking is mandatory prison time unless you set someone up, which they tried to get me to do. So if anyone you know ever gets charged with that and gets out of it (unless their some unforeseen events that get the charges dropped) but the charges stick, meaning they plead guilty to it, they worked as an informant, trust me.
The lawyer straight told me that it wasn't what he could do for me, it was what I could do for myself. And I got the best one in the city, and paid 15,000 for stupid weed hit and 5 perk pain pills. I finally got the trafficking dropped (being my girl did get in a bad wreck in 2005 and ripped her ACL, which she now gets perk 10s and oxy 40s prescribed to her for the pain, so she said the pills were hers and they hit me with a felony possession of narcotics charge, being I weren't supposed to have her pills on my for her outside of their pill bottle) and took the felony possession of marijuana charge. So now I got another 2 felonies added to my list and got another 3 years of probation (first 6 months were intense). So now employers definately weren't trying to see me at all. So I decided to hit the school route back up (hey it could only help me out).
So I waited the year after conviction and started back up at Coastal Carolina for the fall of 2009. I'm currently in the spring semester for 2010 and have a couple semesters left to get my Associates in English and my Associates in Fine Arts which I'm going after simultaneously being one only needs like one class differently. After that I'm transferring to the Unversity of North Carolina of Wilmington for my Bachelors of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (their Creative Writing Program is rated #5 in nation for non-fiction, #22 in poetry, and #25 for fiction [which is what I'm going for]) and a minor in English.Then I'm gonna go for my Master's and then a Doctorate in Creative Writing so I got another 5-7 years to go but by then enough time will have transpired to give me enough wiggle room with employers and I'll have a PHD standing gaurd behind me lol.
The only problem I was having was the finances, the state was looking at me this time (they told me they would being the cops were pissed that I didn't go down for the trafficking being they've wanted me for a while now and tried but I had luck always on my side so they never could, aint trying to press that luck with a strike 3 though). I took my lumps in the system but even then I'm a abnormality being most people who deal for 15 years or more end up in prison. So I couldn't just start paying tuition bills without some sort of income being they searched my bank records with the help of the DEA and found around 200.
So I decided to apply for a pell grant, being I haven't worked in ever, had no tax records since around 98-99, so I knew I'd be approved. But I was wandering how a felony would hold up in this stance. In my case 5 of em from 2 different instances. My first few searches turned up the fact that you were shit out of luck with a felony. If I had of ended my search right then and there I would of never found the truth, being there's alot of misinformation out there. Alot of it is correct, but only for another time in the time-line though (meaning they're still telling people info that they found out along time ago without looking back into it, or others were websites that never updated) so I'm here to set the record straight for all my fellow felons out there who want to get their life in order as I did.
First off around 98 the congress created a bill that stopped allowing anyone who got charged with some misdemeanor drug possessions and any felony drug possessions or dealing charges to be disenfranchised from any federal college financial assistance. What they did was say you could be convicted of murder, rape, or larceny with assault weapons and be able to get a pell grant with those felonies but not drugs. This started an outcry that would continue for years. Then finally in after the 9/11 incident, one prior police officer who turned D.A, named John W. Perry, died helping out at ground zero (sucks cause he was a good man, look him up, he was constantly fighting for human rights). After his death they commemorated him with opening the John W. Perry Fund which offered scholarships to felons who were denied assistance because of their drug convictions.
They also were constantly in the limelight of the media fighting for their cause which finally brought a change around 2002. They finally laid back on the misdameanor and felony possession charges and left it at the felony drug dealing wasn't able to get grants or loans. The battle commenced until it changed again in 2005 making everyone able to get grants. The only draw back was if once again convicted of selling drugs you would then have to stay out of trouble for a year and have gone through some sort of drug program that hit you with at least 2 unannounced urine test to show you were clean staying clean. Then finally Obama got elected and got the feds to back off of the Medical Ganja Groups and got us some more change to the pell grant felony bill.
They finally changed it to what we have now. Which is it doesn't matter what you are charged with, you're good to get federal assistance no matter the felony. The only draw back is if you are charged with dealing drugs while attending college and recieving federal assistance at the same time. If that's the case then you lose the assistance and have to pay back the amount of the grant during that semester or semesters the charge was pending if found guilty. But even then you can still get your assistance back for future semesters if you stay clean and out of trouble for a year and do the drug program and/or tested by unannounced urine tests twice showing clean by even a probation or parole officer. Which is how it's should of been from the beggining.
I can understand the government not wanting to help with financial assistance because your W2's show that you don't have the ability to pay yourself, only to find out that you were dealing drugs at the time, meaning you did have the ability but being it isn't taxable you got out of paying. Completely understandable. I just filled out the FAFSA for the 2010-2011 school year and was approved for the full amount being I have no record of wages for the year of 2009 being I didn't have a job for the entire year, since no one would hire my ass, but this at least gives me hope.
And the fact that after 5 years the governments outlook on the situation has changed to the point I am able to get the max of somewhere between 5300 and 5400 this year in a pell grant also gives me hope that after another 7 years of school, after I finally recieve my PHD, society's outlook on non-violent and non-larceny crimes such as felony possessions of drugs or drug dealing convictions won't be looked on as deal breakers in the employment arena as well.
Here's hoping to change, and I hope my story has spread a little bit of enlightenment to those felons out there who are looking to better there lives through a college education.
Whether for acknowledgement that they are able to attend school with a felony charge, or their ability to get federal assistance from the government to help pay for it. For now I'm gonna continue my educational pursuit and have recently started on my first novel. Who knows if my career as a novelist blossoms, I'll never have to worry about hoping an employer see's past my criminal record being I'll be my own boss.
So for everyone out their who's a convicted felon (and please don't judge us for most everyone out their has commited some sort of crime or felony and just hasn't been caught and labled so you're no better than ex or current convict out there, actually you're worse being your judging someone else while being a hypocrite. And trust me no one out their doesn't commit or hasn't commited some sort of crime, I mean just go down to your local courthouse and get the full list of crimes which would probably be around 30 to 50 gigantic books of criminal charges in your state and county. Some are so stupid like spitting on a sidewalk which aren't pushed by policeman per say but if you do it and like I said you've done something before and almost all probably still do) I'd like to say hold your head up high, and stay with the program because the truth of the matter is that, sure you're past may stay with you, but you still have a future to look forward to, the only difference is we gotta work twice as hard to achieve what someone without a record (notice I didn't say innocent) has or is able to get.
Just don't fall back into that old mentality as I did or you might find yourself looking at two-strikes worrying about the 3rd and final. You can all do it, if you put your mind to it, and don't let anyone get you to believe you can't. Plus one more thing alot of felons are confused about or get misinformation about, your ability to vote. There's only 2 states where being a felon means your unable to vote in elections after becoming a felon. And even in those 2, you can still get that right back through gettting a presidential pardon. Say in North Carolina, which is where I'm from, as soon as you finish your sentence: whether its prison time, or parole, or probation; your automatically able to register to vote again on the next election.
So find out what the policy is in your state and start voting again. In America the number of convicted felons is so high that if we started speaking up for our rights then we would be a power to recon with. The problem is getting us all on the same page, seems it would be easy being society has already lumped us together to begin with. Just food for thought. Oh yeah, just one more thing to anyone who judges a felon, take your two-cents and shove it, then read this.
"Fear makes for easy politics. It both wins votes and primes us to give government more power at the expense of personal liberty. And that's certainly true when it comes to crime. With the possible exception of an incumbent mayor, politicians only benefit from exaggerating the threat of violent crime. Senators, Congressmen, and even governors are rarely held responsible when the crime rate goes up. But they do win votes by proposing new powers for police and prosecutors to bring it down.
The result has been a one-way ratchet effect on crime policy. We're perpetually expanding police and prosecutorial power, a process only occasionally slowed by the courts. Congress and state legislatures rarely take old criminal statutes off the books, but they're always adding new ones. A 2008 report from the Heritage Foundation estimates that at the federal level alone, Congress has been adding about 55 new crimes to the federal criminal code each year since the 1980s. There are now about 4,500 separate federal crimes. And that doesn't include federal regulations, which are increasingly being enforced with criminal, not administrative, penalties. It also doesn't include the increasing leeway with which prosecutors can enforce broadly written federal conspiracy, racketeering, and money laundering laws. And this is before we even get to the states' criminal codes.
In his new book, the Boston-based civil liberties advocate and occasional Reason contributor Harvey Silverglate estimates that in 2009, the average American commits about three federal felonies per day. And yet, we aren’t a nation of degenerates. On the contrary, most social indicators have been moving in a positive direction for a generation. Silverglate argues we're committing these crimes unwittingly. The federal criminal code has become so vast and open to interpretation, Silverglate argues, that a U.S. Attorney can find a way to charge just about anyone with violating federal law. In fact, it's nearly impossible for some business owners to comply with one federal regulation without violating another one. We're no longer governed by laws, we're governed by the whims of lawyers.
Whatever one may think of Ayn Rand's political philosophy or ethics, her criminal justice prophecy has proven unsettlingly accurate: In our continuing eagerness to purge American society of crime, we've allowed the government to make us all into criminals."
[Edited to add paragraph breaks.]