(De-)Criminalizing Welfare? The Rise and Fall of Social Security Fraud Prosecutions in Australia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8400144 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Scarlet Wilcock (0000-0002-0011-1363, University of Wollongong, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1498-1519 |
| Publication date | 2019-09-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Criminology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0955 • E-ISSN: 1464-3529 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjc/azz027 |
| OpenAlex | W2941545205 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 35 |
The social security fraud prosecution rate has fallen by approximately 74.9 per cent in Australia since 2010. This is remarkable considering the national dialogue continues to propound a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to fraud in the welfare system. Drawing on interviews with compliance staff from the Australian Department of Human Services, documentary research and a Foucauldian governmentality analytic, this article charts and interrogates the declining welfare fraud prosecution rate in the context of neoliberal welfare reform. It argues that this decline is at least partially the result of the reformulation of the objects of prosecution strategies by staff responsible for their enactment. This finding highlights the importance of localized accounts of welfare administration to supplement and complicate macro analyses of the ‘criminalization of welfare’ in Western industrialized nations
Administration (probate law) · Context (archaeology) · Criminalization · Criminology · Governmentality · Political science · Politics · Social security · Social Security Act · Social Welfare · Sociology · Welfare · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Employment and Welfare Studies · History · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Public Administration
Framing and Shaming
Investigative private policing beyond the police
Robo‐compliance in Australian employment services
Ethical’ artificial intelligence in the welfare state
Female dependents, individual customers and promiscuous digital personas
The shifting worlds of welfare surveillance and the consolidation of criminalizing logics
Plural Governmentalities
The Working Class and Welfare
Handbook of qualitative research
The Culture of Control
After the Golden Age? Welfare State Dilemmas in a Global Economy
Welfare States in Transition
The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism
Cheating Welfare
Punishing the Poor
Edgework
Official Discourses of the Australian ‘Welfare Cheat’
A Case of Misrepresentation
Researching governmentalities through ethnography
Moral Agent or Actuarial Subject
Volatile and Contradictory Punishment
Pre-crime and post-criminology
Experiments in risk and criminal justice
Policing by risks and targets
Workfare as welfare
Governmentality
The Uses of Neoliberalism
Political power beyond the State
Prisons, neoliberalism and neoliberal states
Audit Culture Revisited
The death of the social? Re-figuring the territory of government
Governing the unemployed self in an active society
Governing economic life
Dissolving the Public Realm? The Logics and Limits of Neo-liberalism
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1.4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |