‘Regulating the Poor’: Observations on the ‘Structural Coupling’ of Welfare, Criminal Justice and the Voluntary Sector in a ‘Big Society’

Abstract

The article argues that the criminalizing tendency in contemporary social policy gets to the heart of how contemporary welfare systems work today. Analyses which point to criminalizing social policy (Rodger 2008), governing through crime (Simon 2007), cultures of control (Garland 2001) and the penalization of the poor (Wacquant 2009) all focus on what I will argue is actually the normal working of contemporary Western welfare systems. In the face of autonomous global economic processes, and largely uncontrollable macro-economic systems which place governments in a subordinate relationship to global financial forces, governance of present-day society is increasingly focused on the management of the behavioural dispositions of populations. In order to make these key themes and relationships visible, the article draws on Niklas Luhmann's functional structural systems theory and his concept of structural coupling to theorize the emerging policy relationships between the welfare system, the criminal justice system and civil society.