Policing Welfare Fraud: The Government of Welfare Fraud and Non-Compliance (Routledge Studies in Crime and Justice in Asia and the Global South)

Synopsis

Policing Welfare Fraud charts and interrogates the suite of measures ostensibly designed to combat welfare fraud and non-compliance. In Australia, which serves as the empirical focus of this book, these strategies include stringent ID checks, pre-emptive data surveillance technologies including the infamous and illegal ‘robodebt’ programme, a dedicated fraud hotline and an ‘intelligence-led’ fraud investigation framework. Drawing on original documentary and interview data, including interviews with fraud investigators, this book unpacks the logics that underpin these anti-fraud initiatives with a focus on how these initiatives are imbued with logics and practices more readily associated with the criminal justice system. The central argument of the book is that the emergence of contemporary welfare compliance regimes represents a form of ‘governing through fraud’ in which the threat of welfare fraud has effectively necessitated a regime of criminalisation within the welfare state. This has been enabled by a broader process of neoliberal welfare reform, which has cast suspicion over all welfare use. The overall effect of this regime is to restrict access to social security, punish welfare recipients and stigmatise welfare use. Policing Welfare Fraud also highlights points of contradiction and multiplicity in the enactment of specific welfare compliance initiatives, including attempts by welfare officials to moderate or reformulate these strategies ‘on the ground’. These findings demonstrate that the criminalisation of welfare is neither uniform nor inexorable, and that more progressive welfare reform is possible. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, politics and those interested in the policing of welfare recipients.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781003815716

Related ISBNs:

9781032638775, 9780429277306, 9780367228712

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

12/11/23

Copyrighted By:

Scarlet Wilcock, The right of Scarlet Wilcock to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.