ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3886-4990

Date of Award

Fall 2025

Language

English

Embargo Period

10-20-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

School of Criminal Justice

Program

Criminal Justice

First Advisor

Justin Pickett

Committee Members

David Hureau, Mary Ellen Stitt, Sarah Shannon

Keywords

mass incarceration, welfare, corrections, inequality, punishment, political economy

Subject Categories

Criminology and Criminal Justice | Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance | Social Policy | Social Welfare

Abstract

In the past fifty years, the United States has seen significant changes in both the criminal legal system and the welfare state. The incarceration rate surged by 475% from 1972 to 2007, driven by state-level decisions about criminal legal policy and disproportionately affecting Black Americans. Simultaneously, welfare programs became less generous, especially for those deemed “undeserving.” A long line of social science scholarship emphasizes that these two major social institutions—the welfare state and the carceral state—must be considered as complementary and alternative methods of managing marginalized groups. Quantitative research often confirms these claims, finding a durable inverse relationship between welfare generosity and imprisonment rates. However, measurement inconsistencies and methodological limitations may complicate and obfuscate prior research findings. This dissertation improves on these shortcomings and explores the theoretical and empirical connections between welfare and punishment using annual data from all fifty states from 1980 to 2019. In Study 1, I compare alternative measures of welfare generosity to determine which measure is best suited for use in analyses predicting imprisonment. In Study 2, I use the welfare measures identified in the Study 1 to determine whether welfare is associated with imprisonment after methodological limitations of prior research are addressed. Considering the gendered and racialized nature of both welfare and punishment, Study 3 decomposes the imprisonment rate by race and gender to examine if and how the relationship between welfare and imprisonment changes for different groups. On the whole, my analyses showed no significant relationship between various measures of welfare generosity and imprisonment. These findings suggest the need for future research reconceptualizing the relationship between welfare and punishment in the 21st century, as well as the importance of appropriate statistical methodology in the analysis of imprisonment rates.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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