Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The New Welfare State : Reconsidering The Welfare-Crime Nexus, Colin Gruner

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A sizeable body of literature has found that welfare reduces crime, but the majority of these studies have used data from before 1996. In 1996 the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) radically changed the welfare system of the United States. Control of welfare programs shifted from the federal government to the states and PRWORA increased the emphasis on getting people off welfare via the introduction of lifetime limits on the receipt of aid and mandatory participation in work programs for able-bodied recipients. Consistent with this emphasis, researchers have documented a precipitous drop in caseload sizes across the …