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This book examines the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare in the United States and how welfare use has resulted in the criminalization of poverty. Today's welfare system treats those who use public benefits, or who even apply for benefits, as latent criminals. Changes in public attitudes and government practices have led to the so-called criminalization of poverty. Hence, many welfare policies are primarily intended to deter welfare use, to guard against misuse, and to punish welfare cheating. Despite this criminalization of the welfare system, poor families continue breaking the rules of welfare receipt and continue hiding information from welfare officials. This book analyzes the welfare system from two vantage points: from the policy level and from the perspective of those who use public benefits. It explores the construction of welfare fraud and the ways that welfare recipients cheat the welfare system as well as the ways that the existing system is at odds with the welfare of families as well as the welfare of society.

This chapter traces the history of welfare policies and welfare politics in the United States, with particular emphasis on the genealogy of the complex, sometimes contradictory, and increasingly punitive welfare rules and regulations. It begins with an overview of how welfare made the transition from charitable aid to government-sponsored relief before turning to the Social Security Act of 1935 and its early years. It then considers the growth of aid to dependent children before discussing the War on Poverty mobilized by the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson. It also examines the rise of the welfare rights movement and its effects on the welfare system, along with the increase in concerns about welfare cheating and the emergence of the symbol of the welfare queen under the Reagan administration, Finally, it explores welfare reform and the convergence of the welfare and criminal justice systems during the 1990s.

This chapter examines the increasing criminalization of the welfare system and welfare recipients. In particular, it considers the growing overlap between the welfare system and the criminal justice system and how welfare recipients get entangled in law's expansive punitive power. It first discusses the welfare system as a tool of law enforcement, citing the fugitive felon prohibitions, Operation Talon, and the drug felony lifetime ban as examples. It then explains how numerous sections of the federal welfare reform legislation of 1996, along with many of the laws and policies implemented by the states, embrace both the goals and the methods of the criminal justice system. It also explores programs that have been implemented to prevent welfare cheating and to police the poor more generally, along with welfare policies in California and welfare fraud investigations carried out in the state. The chapter concludes with an overview of nationwide trends in the criminalization of poverty and especially welfare cheating.

This chapter examines the legitimacy of welfare law by proposing frameworks other than the governing frame of criminal regulation to guide welfare policies. It suggests that the U.S. welfare system undermines rather than promotes legality and that many welfare recipients lack basic knowledge of the rules. The recipients interviewed for this book reported receiving wrong information about the rules and requirements from welfare officials. There was a gap between the rules as they were announced and their actual implementation, and some of the elements of federal welfare reform contradicted each other. As a result, welfare recipients had difficulty orienting their actions to the welfare rules. Since the penalties were not clear to those subject to them, the get-tough penalties for welfare cheating could not deter rule breaking. This chapter outlines the basics of procedurally fair and just welfare laws that adhere to the fundamental principles of legality, are not contradictory or too complicated, can be effectively communicated to the public, and can be followed.