Welfare system = policing

Welfare reform not only produced punitive policies, but also established a system that blurred the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system. Until the 1990s, the welfare system was relatively simple and self-contained. The rules of AFDC and Food Stamps were handed down by the federal government, and eligibility rules and violations of welfare rules were consistent from state to state. If families were found ineligible for aid, they were given notice and their benefits ended. If they were found cheating-for example, underreporting their income or failing to report a change of household composition-but were still income-eligible for aid, then the penalties were civil: their welfare benefits would typically be reduced by a certain percentage each month until any overpayments were recouped by the state. 10 6 As a result of the reforms, the federal government and the states instituted policies and practices that burdened welfare receipt with criminality; policed the everyday lives of poor families; and wove the criminal justice system into the welfare system, often entangling poor families in the process. David Garland notes that the "themes that dominate crime policy-rational choice and the structures of control, deterrents, and disincentives, the normality of crime, the responsibilization of individuals, the threatening underclass, the failing, overly lenient system-have come to organize the politics of poverty as well." 10 7 The welfare reform policies were designed to punish the poor; to stigmatize poverty, particularly poverty that leads to welfare receipt; and to create a system of deterrence aimed at the middle class. A vast regulatory and punitive system developed under welfare reform. The welfare policies the states instituted after welfare devolution included a broad range of punitive approaches to the poor designed not only to punish poor adults who failed to transition from welfare to work, but also to punish entire families where the head of the household failed to live up to governing standards of morality. 10 8 The reforms not only ended aid to families as a federal entitlement, they allowed states to develop their own rules about who was entitled to aid and their own regulations and practices around removing families from the aid rolls. More importantly and less well-known, however, the reforms of 1996 produced a system that blurred the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system. The welfare system is increasingly used by the government to police crimes, both those involving welfare and those unrelated to welfare. As the next Part illustrates, the welfare system is now being used to catch criminals, and restrictions on aid are being used to punish individuals who have been convicted of crimes. The fugitive felon prohibitions, Operation Talon, and the drug felony lifetime ban have little to do with aid to the poor. These rules and programs are essentially new ways for the criminal justice system to make use of welfare administrative data to capture poor individuals who are also wanted by the criminal justice system. Through changes in statutes and practices, then, the welfare system has become an extension of the criminal justice system.