Welfare Crises, Penal Solutions, and the Origins of the “Welfare Queen”

Abstract

This article contributes to the scholarship on mass incarceration by highlighting the ways penal expansion intervened in the history of other state institutions. It argues that the increasing criminalization of welfare fraud was instrumental in undermining political support for key social welfare programs, particularly Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). In the 1970s, lawmakers and welfare administrators enlisted law enforcement’s expanding authority to contain growing welfare costs and counter demands from the welfare rights movement. It was from these anti-welfare fraud campaigns that the racialized caricature of the “welfare queen” entered the political lexicon. Recruiting the criminal justice system further stigmatized AFDC recipients by positioning them as criminally suspect, financially secure, and morally unworthy. I argue that while increased penalties for welfare fraud did not swell the penal system to the same extent as initiatives like the War on Drugs, they shaped popular knowledge about poor families and undermined faith in the state’s capacity to mitigate inequality.