RT | Christopher Petrella
24 February, 2012
On August 22, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed into law his now infamous Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act thereby “end[ing] welfare as we have come to know it.” The Act replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). TANF establishes a lifetime limit of 60 months (5 years) for federal assistance, mandates that single parents participate in work activities for an average of 30 hours per week, and caps federal block grant contributions to states at $16.6 billion per year. (As a result of inflation the real value of the TANF block grant has already fallen by 28%.)
And despite few fluctuations in the poverty rate since TANF supplanted AFCD, the participation rate among eligible families has plummeted by 52% since1995. http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=11053
Over the same time period—and despite flat to declining crime rates— the U.S. prison and jail population has increased by 44%. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1278
Perhaps a quickly expanding prison population is precisely the unspoken foundation upon which “welfare to workfare” rests. We haven’t “ended welfare;” instead we’ve invisiblized it by shifting its beneficiaries from the public square to the prison yard.
The atrophy of the social welfare state and the growth of the penal state represent a double criminalization of poverty. Considering TANF/AFDC data alongside trends in incarceration is necessary for rethinking the role of the state in provisioning basic social services. The transition from welfare to workfare and the proliferation of bodies behind bars taken together “work to marginalize populations—by forcing them off the public aid rolls, on the one side, and holding them under lock, on the other—and eventually pushing them into the peripheral [and deeply precarious] sectors of the labor market.” http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/WEDDINGWORKFAREPRISONFARE-FINAL.pdf
The shared historical roots and political convergences of the assistantial and penitential functions of the state are further validated by the fact that the “social profile” of their respective beneficiaries is uncannily similar. For instance, 50% of former AFDC recipients throughout the early 1990s lived at or below half of the poverty line. Today, 65% of inmates in the United States inhabit the same category.
http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/CRAFTINGNEOLIBERALSTATE-pub.pdf
Both populations, as well, are disproportionately composed of people of color. In1995, 37.2% and 20.7% of AFDC recipients were Black or Latin@, respectively, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/character/FY95/t10.htm
and in 2010 40% and 20% of state and federal inmates were Black and Latin@, respectively.
http://www.cjcj.org/files/racial_disproportionality.pdf .
Finally, 44% of AFDC recipients in 1994 had not finished high school compared to 41% of those incarcerated in 2003, the most recent year for which data is available. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf
The relationship between the sudden but substantial growth in containment justified through the rhetoric of social dishonor and emergence of workfare as a condition of federal subsidy represents an intra-State struggle over its basic social function.
Simply asked, what is the role of the State? And further, what ought to be the role of the State? (Should the role of the State, as neoliberals contend, be limited to safeguarding the so-called “free market” and protecting contracts???)
The double criminalization of poverty marked by ...
Further, the double criminalization of poverty serves an important ideological function in that it allows the corporate class to attribute widespread unemployment and poverty to personal moral depravity instead of material deprivation. The poor are not depraved; they’re deprived of the basic social resources to secure a dignified standard of living. In the end, the survival of any “criminal State” hinges on its ability to individualize criminality so as to divert attention from its complicitous role in its production.
24 February, 2012
On August 22, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed into law his now infamous Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act thereby “end[ing] welfare as we have come to know it.” The Act replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). TANF establishes a lifetime limit of 60 months (5 years) for federal assistance, mandates that single parents participate in work activities for an average of 30 hours per week, and caps federal block grant contributions to states at $16.6 billion per year. (As a result of inflation the real value of the TANF block grant has already fallen by 28%.)
And despite few fluctuations in the poverty rate since TANF supplanted AFCD, the participation rate among eligible families has plummeted by 52% since1995. http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=11053
Over the same time period—and despite flat to declining crime rates— the U.S. prison and jail population has increased by 44%. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1278
Perhaps a quickly expanding prison population is precisely the unspoken foundation upon which “welfare to workfare” rests. We haven’t “ended welfare;” instead we’ve invisiblized it by shifting its beneficiaries from the public square to the prison yard.
The atrophy of the social welfare state and the growth of the penal state represent a double criminalization of poverty. Considering TANF/AFDC data alongside trends in incarceration is necessary for rethinking the role of the state in provisioning basic social services. The transition from welfare to workfare and the proliferation of bodies behind bars taken together “work to marginalize populations—by forcing them off the public aid rolls, on the one side, and holding them under lock, on the other—and eventually pushing them into the peripheral [and deeply precarious] sectors of the labor market.” http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/WEDDINGWORKFAREPRISONFARE-FINAL.pdf
The shared historical roots and political convergences of the assistantial and penitential functions of the state are further validated by the fact that the “social profile” of their respective beneficiaries is uncannily similar. For instance, 50% of former AFDC recipients throughout the early 1990s lived at or below half of the poverty line. Today, 65% of inmates in the United States inhabit the same category.
http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/CRAFTINGNEOLIBERALSTATE-pub.pdf
Both populations, as well, are disproportionately composed of people of color. In1995, 37.2% and 20.7% of AFDC recipients were Black or Latin@, respectively, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/character/FY95/t10.htm
and in 2010 40% and 20% of state and federal inmates were Black and Latin@, respectively.
http://www.cjcj.org/files/racial_disproportionality.pdf .
Finally, 44% of AFDC recipients in 1994 had not finished high school compared to 41% of those incarcerated in 2003, the most recent year for which data is available. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf
The relationship between the sudden but substantial growth in containment justified through the rhetoric of social dishonor and emergence of workfare as a condition of federal subsidy represents an intra-State struggle over its basic social function.
Simply asked, what is the role of the State? And further, what ought to be the role of the State? (Should the role of the State, as neoliberals contend, be limited to safeguarding the so-called “free market” and protecting contracts???)
The double criminalization of poverty marked by ...
is evidence that the State is trying to re-architecting itself on our watch.
- reducing public aid to low income people of color (disproportionately) and
- locking them up (disproportionately) for being poor...
Further, the double criminalization of poverty serves an important ideological function in that it allows the corporate class to attribute widespread unemployment and poverty to personal moral depravity instead of material deprivation. The poor are not depraved; they’re deprived of the basic social resources to secure a dignified standard of living. In the end, the survival of any “criminal State” hinges on its ability to individualize criminality so as to divert attention from its complicitous role in its production.
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