Crime Threat and Drug Testing Requirements for Welfare Applicants

• In Event: Policies, Threat, and Communities

Abstract

Since 2010, fifteen U.S. states have passed some sort of restrictive drug-testing program for welfare-applicants and/or suspected recipients. Sociologists and criminologists are often concerned with identifying the conditions under which states implement a particular social policy. As such, we ask what conditions separate states that have implemented drug testing policies for welfare applicants from those that have not. Using discrete-time event history analysis models we test several existing theories of policy creation, such as diffusion, group threat, and political processes. Results indicate that a higher level of property crime predict that a state will pass a requirement, in addition to a decreasing unemployment rate gap between whites and racial minorities. We also find that passage is positively associated with possessing a Republican governor, and having a higher proportion of neighboring states that have passed legislation. In line with existing research, our results re-affirm the association between downward economic mobility and reactionary political response. They also underscore the ongoing shift towards disciplinary poverty management in the United States, even in the face of a substantial economic downturn.

Authors

• Andrew Davis, University of Arizona

• Eric Bjorkland, University of Arizona

• Jessica Pfaffendorf, University of Arizona