Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty

by Kaaryn S Gustafson

Overview

This study of the welfare system is “simultaneously compassionate and scholarly . . . a rare insider perspective on how citizens understand and use welfare” (Corey Shdaimah, author of Negotiating Justice).

 

Since the 1990s, 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. But while 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 shines a light on these gray areas, 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 well-meaning individuals can easily become entangled in the complex systems of rules. 

Basing her analysis on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson examines the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud. In doing so, she challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814732915
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	242
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Kaaryn S. Gustafson is Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  List of Abbreviations  1 Introduction  2 Reconstructing Social Ills: From the Perils of Poverty to Welfare Dependency 3 The Criminalization of Poverty  4 A Glimpse at the Interviewees  5 Living within and without the Rules  6 Engaging with Rules and Negotiating Compliance 7 Contextualizing Criminality, Noncompliance, and Resistance  8 Cheating Ourselves  Appendix A: Critical Methodology  Appendix B: Interview Schedule  Works Cited Index  About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“A fascinating account of the welfare system seen from the perspective of welfare recipients.”-Austin Sarat,William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College

"Cheating Welfare is simultaneously compassionate and scholarly. Gustafson provides a rare insider perspective on how citizens understand and use welfare. The stories that she relates are a testament to the resilience and strength of people caring for others as best they can in the face of great adversity. Her discussion of necessary, sometimes inadvertent, non-compliance as a form of resistance brings a more complex understanding to theories of rule abidance. This compelling book is a must-read for students, policymakers, and scholars who wish to have informed opinions based on how policies actually shape the behavior of and outcomes for low-income citizens in the context of their complex lived reality.”-Corey Shdaimah,author of Negotiating Justice

“Gustafson's book is a devastating expose on welfare reform's criminalization of poverty. It puts into sharp relief how welfare policy today reinforces the cultural biases against the poor while actually working to make the poorest of the poor even poorer. Steeped in deep understanding of the history of welfare policy, Cheating Welfare poignantly relies on first-hand accounts from clients to specify the ways that the current system works to undermine their attempts to achieve self- sufficiency. The contemporary integration of welfare policy and criminal law is put under a brilliant light for all to see. This is a most timely and critical book that should be read widely.”-Sanford Schram,author of Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance and Globalization

Editorial Reviews

"The 1990s ushered in an era of neoliberal changes in the US in public policies aimed at the poor. Key to these modifications was a shift in ideological thought that mandated personal responsibility for all. Poverty researchers have always paid attention to the hegemonic discourses that shaped public policy, ranging from regulating the behaviors of the poor, to determining which poor are worthy of assistance, to punishing the poor (e.g., Loïc Waquant, Punishing the Poor, 2009; Michael Katz, The Undeserving Poor, 1989). Gustafson (law, Connecticut) continues this tradition by focusing on how US welfare policy has increasingly become criminalized despite the polyvocality of welfare recipients. She examines the similarities and differences of 34 female and male respondents concerning their knowledge, perspectives, and experiences of the rules and sanctions governing welfare. The author begins by offering a comprehensive overview of US poverty embedded within a criminalization of poverty,and draws upon rational choice theory to conceptually frame her arguments. She adeptly demonstrates the need for a new paradigm that embodies the words of the Founding Fathers to "promote the general Welfare" of all US citizens. Students and researchers alike will benefit from her multidisciplinary approach. Summing Up:Recommended.Most levels/libraries."

Choice

"Cheating Welfare is simultaneously compassionate and scholarly. Gustafson provides a rare insider perspective on how citizens understand and use welfare. The stories that she relates are a testament to the resilience and strength of people caring for others as best they can in the face of great adversity. Her discussion of necessary, sometimes inadvertent, non-compliance as a form of resistance brings a more complex understanding to theories of rule abidance. This compelling book is a must-read for students, policymakers, and scholars who wish to have informed opinions based on how policies actually shape the behavior of and outcomes for low-income citizens in the context of their complex lived reality."

Corey Shdaimah

"Three categories of welfare recipients emerged from these interviews, the Informed, the Misinformed, and the Preoccupied/Disengaged. Gustafson's main contribution to our understanding of welfare is to show how these categories differ from our assumptions regarding recipients. Through liberal use of interviewee quotes, matched with relevant background on their lives, Gustafson proves that the welfare recipients differ in significant ways from each other and also from the monolithic stereotype. In doing so, Gustafson shows that by listening to the voices of the poor we can better understand the shortfalls of policies designed to help the poor."

Yale Human Rights & Development - Ezra Rosser

"The book is a readable account of welfare mothers (and a few fathers), emphasizing how these people understand and often violate the rules they are supposed to follow. It would be useful in a course on welfare or perhaps as supplementary reading in a course on poverty."

Contemporary Sociology - C. Emory Burton

Three categories of welfare recipients emerged from these interviews, the Informed, the Misinformed, and the Preoccupied/Disengaged. Gustafson's main contribution to our understanding of welfare is to show how these categories differ from our assumptions regarding recipients. Through liberal use of interviewee quotes, matched with relevant background on their lives, Gustafson proves that the welfare recipients differ in significant ways from each other and also from the monolithic stereotype. In doing so, Gustafson shows that by listening to the voices of the poor we can better understand the shortfalls of policies designed to help the poor.-Ezra Rosser,Yale Human Rights & Development

I am drunk on the virtues of Cheating Welfare, and think that all serious law and society scholars should read it. Even to one who is steeped in the historical and contemporary record of poor people’s treatment by the government of the United States, Gustafson’s work is surprising and very instructive.-Felicia Kornbluh,Law and Society Review

From the Publisher