Workfare To Prisonfare Essay

The United States has been making the transition from welfare to workfare to prisonfare very rapidly. As the government continues to get rid of public assistance and force more restrictions on those who receive, it people are forced to work multiple low-paying jobs at the same time just to stay afloat. When these jobs are unavailable people turn to crime or homelessness. Crime and homelessness (though we call it vagrancy) are both crimes in the current American society. Committing either of these crimes or countless others pushes people, especially the poor, into prison creating what Loic Waquant calls “prisonfare” in his book Punishing the Poor. The cycle of workfare to prisonfare and back catches millions of American citizens and refuses

In other words, workfare only comes about when society fails at providing accurate resources to escape poverty. Workfare is the obligation impoverished people are facing to work jobs with little security and no benefits which keep them living below the poverty line. Wacquant states “Today one in three Americans in the labor force is a non standard wage worker” (55) Another aspect of the transition from welfare to workfare is that to receive public aid you must have a job. In order to receive benefits one must accept any job offered regardless of conditions, pay, or lack of benefits. This may seem like a way to help people or make them prove they are trying to improve their lives however, this rule prevents people from searching for better jobs or going to

Wacquant argues “Confinement is the other technique through which the nagging problem of persistent marginally rooted in unemployment, subemployment, and the precarious work is made to shrink on —if not disappear from — the public scene” (60). By forcing people to work unreliable jobs, America is also forcing people into prison. He also states “The vast majority of the occupants of county jails do come from the ranks of the “working poor,” that fraction of the working class that does not manage to escape poverty although they work, but who are largely ineligible for social protections because they work at poverty-level jobs” (70). This endless circle of unjust treatment of the poor has dire consequences. People released from prison are kept of heavy surveillance and are unable to grab hold of a job because employers will not hire ex-convicts. They also lose all ability to receive any further pubic assistance. In response, their children are led down the same path of little to no education, which leads to unstable working conditions, which leads to