“I’m Looking At Your Neighbor Over Here”: Databases and Shoe Leather in Welfare Fraud Control

• In Event: 241 - Regular Session. Law and Society

Abstract

This paper analyzes a type of social control that operates at the intersection of social service agencies and law enforcement in the United States: welfare fraud control units. Recipients of public assistance have long been subject to inspection and surveillance as a condition of aid. The caseworker interview and the home visit, including particularly invasive tactics such as midnight “man in the house” raids, are familiar territory. This paper addresses a relatively recent development in this legacy, the formation of specialized units related to fraud control at the state level. The establishment of these units is tied to several historical phenomena, including a broader push toward accountability, oversight, and cost control in government spending and an ongoing backlash against aid recipients that foregrounds the incidence of welfare fraud and frequently equates aid receipt itself with fraud, while drawing on racial and gender prejudice. Dedicated welfare fraud control units represent a unique social space in which public functions of social welfare provision and law enforcement collide, begetting collaborations between social service employees, police, and prosecutors. Utilizing a national overview of state-level fraud control units and interview-based case studies of five states, this project analyzes the bureaucratic and political foundations and methods and motivations of the organizations charged with policing welfare.

Author

• Spencer Headworth, Northwestern University