The following is a guest post by Margaret Viggiani
Poor and criminalized: a feminist scholar exposes the
welfare-to-prison pipeline
By Margaret Viggiani
Freedom Socialist newspaper, Vol. 33, No. 5, October-September 2012
www.socialism.com
Talking to Rebecca Castner, one is instantly drawn to her intensity. A Ph.D.
graduate from Women Studies at the University of Washington, Castner has
researched how poor mothers, in particular women of color, are criminalized by
the welfare system. As a single mom who supported her family on low-wage
jobs, Castner knows firsthand the trials of the women she studied.
The myth.
Ronald Reagan emblazoned the stereotype of the Welfare Queen — young,
Black, with too many kids — onto the American consciousness. This inaccurate
and racist portrayal helped pave the way for George H. W. Bush's and later Bill Clinton’s devastating revamping
of the welfare system. Welfare “reform” has forced millions of women and
children off TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) by imposing time
limits, family caps and sanctions. Castner argues that Clinton’s policies not only
drastically shrank social services but also resulted in massive expansion of the
U.S. penal system.
According to the Census Bureau, the poverty rate among women in 2011 was
14.6 percent, or almost 18 million females. Rates of poverty were higher for
women of color — 25 percent for Blacks and 23 percent for Latinas.
One in five
children live in poverty and the majority of poor children live in female-headed
families.
Making poverty a crime.
Given that the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) is charged
with both helping families and conducting criminal investigations against them,
Castner believes the frequent downward spiral from welfare to prison is not mere
coincidence.
In fact, she hypothesizes that asking for assistance puts the needy at risk
of being criminalized. Welfare doesn’t provide enough to survive, leaving its
recipients in desperation. Following the mind-boggling and intrusive rules is
nearly impossible. Breaking the rules can lead to criminal charges.
Castner reached her conclusions by reviewing in depth 13 cases of welfare fraud
from the 103 files provided by King County. The cases occurred between 2000
and 2005.
One of her subjects, Lisa Bandy (a pseudonym assigned by Castner), was a
mother of four living in Renton, Wash. To adequately survive without additional
assistance, a family of two in that town needed an income of $2,862. But Bandy
only received $1,018 a month in assistance.
Unable to afford housing, Bandy and her four children moved at least seven
times and endured stretches of homelessness over a 31-month period. To gain
welfare benefits, Bandy completed over 22 pages of questions. She had to
provide additional documents including her car title, wage and bank statements,
birth certificates and proof of who fathered her children. This paperwork is more
invasive than alleged criminals are subject to. Castner aptly calls it “getting
booked” into welfare.
In 39 months, Bandy was subjected to 45 additional requests for verification, on
top of the routine paperwork she was regularly submitting. Failure or inability to
provide requested information caused her benefits to be withheld or denied. This
happened time and again.
Crime and punishment.
When signing up for food stamps, a recipient is warned that those who knowingly
break a rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $250,000, imprisoned up to 20
years, or both. As Castner puts it, “using food stamps may lead to life in prison.”
Comparing the high penalty for food stamp “fraud” with leniency toward bank
CEOs who stole billions and nearly collapsed the economy, Castner observes
that being poor is about the worst crime there is in the eyes of capitalism.
In 2001, Lisa Bandy was convicted of a felony — Theft in the First Degree —
for inaccurately reporting the date she started working and her earnings. She
was found guilty of defrauding the state of $8,112 over the course of 13 months.
Her punishment: 240 hours of community service, 12 months of probation and
restitution of over $8,500. In 2002, she was given another 12 months probation
because she had not paid any of her financial obligation. After four years, her
case was still open.
During Castner’s years of research, only two of the 13 cases she followed were
closed. She calls it “indefinite servitude to the penal system.” Since the debt will
not go away until it’s paid, each of these desperately poor mothers live under the
threat of imprisonment for failure to make restitution.
It’s no surprise the system is also rife with racial disparity. The majority of those
convicted of welfare fraud in Castner’s study were women of color. They received
more felony convictions and spent more time in jail. In fact, two Black women
convicted of “stealing” the least amount of money spent the most time in jail.
The real cost.
Washington state spent countless hours to prosecute the cases Castner
followed. The court files averaged 108 pages. At least 183 attorneys were
involved. Three State Patrol officers were assigned to stake out a woman’s
house to see if the father of her children was spending the night. Dozens of
DSHS personnel were subpoenaed to build the cases. Despite DSHS claims that
only major offenders are prosecuted, two of Castner’s cases involved sums of
less than $500.
The dehumanizing effects of the welfare bureaucracy shaped the system’s
view of these women long before they got caught up in the criminal justice
juggernaut. In the 1,400 pages of documents reviewed by Castner, not one word
originated from the women themselves. She says they were invisible, removed
from humanity and reduced to a series of numbers (height, weight, age),
characteristics (ethnicity, hair color, eye color, tattoos) and the negative opinions
of others. Their lives were reshaped and retold by a mountain of paperwork
in which others spoke for and defined them. They were no longer people, but
constructs of a hostile system.
Castner decries the enormous costs to the women, their children (the unseen
victims), and to society. They suffered severe long-term financial repercussions
and profound emotional, physical and mental tolls. It would have been far more
productive and effective for society to assist them with childcare, shelter, food
and other necessary essentials, than to lock them up.
Instead her subjects, as felons, found additional doors closed to them: they were
denied voting rights and access to public housing, tuition aid, and future public
benefits. They were ground deeper into poverty and further away from obtaining
jobs that paid a livable wage.
Why would any system permit such an expensive, pointless waste of human
potential? As capitalism struggles to stay afloat, it drives down the living
standards of the entire working class. Millions of women and men of color are
specially targeted by the “new” Jim Crow, which uses the prison-industrial
complex and the welfare system to try to crush those who historically have been
the most militant fighters for economic and social justice. History also shows,
however, that resistance to injustice is a human instinct that cannot be crushed.
The day of reckoning is not far off!
Send your comments to
vig37@hotmail.com.
