Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty

by Kaaryn S. Gustafson

Over the last three decades, welfare policies have been informed by popular beliefs that welfare fraud is rampant. As a result, welfare policies have become more punitive and the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system have blurred—so much so that in some locales prosecution caseloads for welfare fraud exceed welfare caseloads. In reality, some recipients manipulate the welfare system for their own ends, others are gravely hurt by punitive policies, and still others fall somewhere in between.
In Cheating Welfare, Kaaryn S. Gustafson endeavors to clear up these gray areas by providing insights into the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare. She shows why cheating is all but inevitable—not because poor people are immoral, but because ordinary individuals navigating complex systems of rules are likely to become entangled despite their best efforts. Through an examination of the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud, which she bases on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.

Genres: Poverty, Law

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Lauren Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong book about how the 1996 welfare reforms were created with the goal of getting people from welfare into jobs but instead led to a system with a lot of problems and no solutions. The author speaks of welfare in its formation when it used to be for the good of the people rather than a way to criminalize people already on the margins of society, citing the welfare reforms as the reason for its current stigmatization with the "welfare queen" symbol, for example. Told mostly through personal interviews from the author's research, it's a strong look at the problems within the system and while there's no major solution offered in terms of fixing things, it's clear that a change does need to be made.