Gender Equality, State Paternalism, and the Drug Felony Lifetime Ban

• In Event: Women, Gender, and the Justice System

Abstract

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 included the less studied Section 115, the drug felony lifetime ban, which implemented eligibility requirements ostensibly aimed at combating drug use by women on the welfare rolls. Prior research on welfare reform policies has focused on state characteristics such as racial demographics and political processes to explain strict versus lenient policy implementation. For this research project, I use the theoretical hypothesis of chivalry/paternalism, the equality with vengeance theory, and the evil woman hypothesis to explore whether these theories can be expanded beyond the judicial level to the state legislative level. I utilize a longitudinal dataset of state years from 2004 through 2010 compiled from various secondary data sources available online such as the Urban Institute Welfare Rules Database. I use multi-level multinomial logistic regression modeling, looking at states nested within years. Preliminary results provides support for the equality with vengeance hypothesis with female incarceration being the strongest indicator for a state implementing a modified version of the ban (5% increase, p<.01). Similarly the female violent crime rate is the strongest indicator of implementing a full ban (2% increase, p<.01).

Authors

• Brittany T. Martin, University of Georgia

• Sarah Shannon, University of Georgia