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This chapter analyzes the central role of criminalization and welfare fraud in degrading the civic status of welfare recipients and the declining support for the program. Politicians, such as Ronald Reagan, blamed soaring caseloads not on the economic conditions or the recent legal reforms that prohibited states from denying aid on the basis of race or morality, but on personal failings of recipients, particularly the alleged preponderance of sexually deviant welfare “cheaters.” To manage this problem, they often enlisted law enforcement and penal rituals. The press amplified politicians' narrative through sensationalized, often anomalous, tales of recipients' shiftlessness, devious scams, and extravagant consumption.

This chapter examines welfare recipients' resistance to, and investment in, law's legitimacy when their formal compliance with the law was often tenuous. Drawing on interviews with thirty-four welfare recipients in a Northern California county, it considers how welfare recipients reacted to the criminalization of poverty and the ways resistance can maintain and reinforce systems of domination, along with the recipients' limited capacity to mobilize for political change. It also explains how recipients become entangled in welfare fraud and the target of welfare fraud investigations and criminal prosecutions, and why they do not comply with welfare laws. Finally, it analyzes existing notions of political resistance and noncompliance with welfare rules.

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 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.

Chapter 14 debunks the myth that welfare fraud is rampant. Although this myth is routinely perpetrated by political actors, the reality is that fraud is quite uncommon. Error rates are examined for the SNAP program, showing overall low incidence. There are currently multiple initiatives underway to curb SNAP enrollment that appear to be fueled by unfounded concerns about fraud, abuse, and waste. In addition, the trend toward criminalization of welfare use is discussed. This includes finger-imaging welfare recipients along with drug testing. Finally, research has demonstrated that a number of poverty-stricken individuals and families who would be eligible for various safety net programs choose not to apply in order to avoid the humiliation, frustration, and stigma associated with welfare.