Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Editor's introduction
- two Supporting people? Universal Credit, conditionality and the recalibration of vulnerability
- three Punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency: exploring the role of welfare conditionality with ‘at risk’ women attempting to live ‘a good life’
- four Resisting welfare conditionality: constraint, choice and dissent among homeless migrants
- five No strings attached? An exploration of employment support services offered by third sector homelessness organisations
- six Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK
- seven Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions
- eight Editor's afterword
- Index
three - Punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency: exploring the role of welfare conditionality with ‘at risk’ women attempting to live ‘a good life’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- one Editor's introduction
- two Supporting people? Universal Credit, conditionality and the recalibration of vulnerability
- three Punishment, powerlessness and bounded agency: exploring the role of welfare conditionality with ‘at risk’ women attempting to live ‘a good life’
- four Resisting welfare conditionality: constraint, choice and dissent among homeless migrants
- five No strings attached? An exploration of employment support services offered by third sector homelessness organisations
- six Exploring the impact of welfare conditionality on Roma migrants in the UK
- seven Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions
- eight Editor's afterword
- Index
Summary
Introduction
This chapter explores the lived experiences of women at the penalwelfare nexus, a space where social and penal policy overlap. ‘Penalwelfarism’ was initially used as a term to reflect the shift towards welfarist and rehabilitative policies associated with the post Second World War welfare settlement (Esping-Anderson, 1996; Garland, 2001). Since the 1980s, public policy has taken a more punitive trajectory, which has resulted in a more expansive and punitive criminal justice system as well as the penalisation of welfare (Foucault, 1977; Pratt et al, 2005; Bumiller, 2013).
This chapter focuses specifically on women who have been subject to criminal justice supervision and interventions in the community and who are in receipt of social assistance benefits. It highlights their attempts to move away from the social margins, reintegrate into society and move closer to the labour market. It draws on new empirical data from in-depth qualitative interviews with 24 women who have offended or who are considered to be ‘at risk’ of offending, conducted in two UK cities between January 2016 and February 2017. The chapter examines how UK social institutions, and in particular a welfare system characterised by increasing conditionality, impact on women engaged in community-based services that aim to divert them away from prison and to reduce recidivism. In doing so, it foregrounds the context of gendered precariousness, which criminalised women inhabit at the penal-welfare nexus.
The focus on the use of sanction and support to promote behaviour change is a growing area of research, with evidence suggesting that rather than a ‘hand up’, the welfare system in its current guise can bestow more of a ‘slap down’ (Fletcher and Wright, 2017). This chapter aims to highlight another dynamic of the current welfare regime, by exploring its impact on a specific group of women subject to multiple, overlapping policy aims of the state. The problem for this group is not so much the behaviour change agenda and sanctions that underpin the UK's increasingly conditional social security system; many attempt to live a ‘good life’, and the experience of sanctioning is low.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dealing with Welfare ConditionalityImplementation and Effects, pp. 41 - 68Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2019