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Managing The Socially Marginalized: Attitudes Towards Welfare, Punishment And Race, Darren Wheelock, Pamela Wald, Yakov Shchukin

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Welfare and incarceration policies have converged to form a system of governance over socially marginalized groups, particularly racial minorities. In both of these policy areas, rehabilitative and social support objectives have been replaced with a more punitive and restrictive system. The authors examine the convergence in individual-level attitudes concerning welfare and criminal punishment, using national survey data. The authors' analysis indicates a statistically significant relationship between punitive attitudes toward welfare and punishment. Furthermore, accounting for the respondents' racial attitudes explains the bivariate relationship between welfare and punishment. Thus, racial attitudes seemingly link support for punitive approaches to opposition to welfare …