I read an interesting report today on the social security administrations website by the Office of The Inspector General that found 4 years after they issued recomendations to 13 states Department of Corrections to stop allowing prisoners access to social security numbers that a current review this year found that 8 states still allowed prisoners access to social security records. This can allow those prisoners to record the info and sell the info to criminal groups that could use it for making false documents such as social security cards and identity cards.

PRISONS IN SOME STATES CONTINUED TO ALLOW INMATES ACCESS TO SSNs
We determined that 8 (62 percent) of the 13 States we identified in our August 2006
report continued to allow prisoners access to SSNs through prison work programs (see
Table 1). Most prisoners had access to SSNs while performing work for Federal, State,
and/or local governments. Specifically, prisoners performed such duties as data entry,
encoding, digital imaging, and records conversion. The types of documents prisoners
viewed included student transcripts, criminal background checks, crime reports, health
records, employee wage statements, Internal Revenue Service forms, and Department
of Labor forms, all of which generally contained personally identifiable information (PII)
(including SSNs).
Although we recognize there may be benefits in allowing prisoners to work while
incarcerated, we question whether prisoners have a need to know other individuals’
SSNs. We continue to believe allowing prisoners access to SSNs increases the risk
that individuals may improperly obtain and misuse SSNs. We believe government
entities can reduce such risk by employing prisoners in jobs that do not involve SSN

These are the 8 states they listed that still allow it.

Table 1: States That Continue to Allow Prisoners Access
to Social Security Numbers
State
Number of
Facilities
Allowing
Access
Type of Work
1 Alabama 1 Data Entry
2 Arkansas 1 Digital Imaging
3 Kansas* 5 Work release, data entry, microfilm and digital imaging
4 Nebraska 1 Data entry
5 Oklahoma 2 Data entry and optical imaging
6 South Dakota 1 Data entry and scanning
7 Tennessee* 4 Test distribution center, call center and work release
8 West Virginia* Unknown Type of service depends on the work release program

Thats crazy!!! The OIG report is titled:

QUICK RESPONSE
EVALUATION
Prisoners’ Access to
Social Security Numbers
A-08-10-11042