Broke people, broken rules: Explaining welfare fraud investigators’ attributions
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520928131 |
| Author | Spencer Headworth |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Broke people, broken
rules: Explaining welfare
fraud investigators’
attributions
Spencer Headworth
Purdue University, USA
Abstract
There is a notable contrast between welfare clients’ and welfare fraud investigators’
accounts of rule breaking behaviors. Clients describe some actions (or inactions) that
constitute rule violations as accidental, and tend to attribute others to situational factors:
program rules’ complexity, the exigencies of day-to-day subsistence, and time and energy
limitations. Fraud investigators, on the other hand, are comparatively likely to identify rule
breaking as deliberate and cite clients’ dispositions to explain the behavior. In part, this
disparity reflects the “fundamental attribution error,” the tendency to overestimate dis-
positional factors’ role in drivingothers’ behavior. However, evidence from interviews with
welfare fraud workers from five US states reveals the impactful administrative and nor-
mative factors that encourage them to make and assert attributions of intentionality and
dispositional motivation. First, administrative priorities foreground intentional violations:
federal authorities financially incentivize deliberate fraud charges, and managers favor
these cases, which permit client suspensions and disqualifications. Second, emphasizing
internal motivations over situational pressures serves a valuable normative function, estab-
lishing punished clients’ blameworthiness and thus defending the legitimacy of both indi-
vidual fraud workers and the units they compose. These findings demonstrate how policy
structures and enforcement practices do not just respond to blameworthy or legally
culpable behavior, but help construct narratives of blameworthiness and culpability.
Keywords
attribution, fraud, intent, welfare
Corresponding author:
Spencer Headworth, Purdue University, 700 W. State St., Room 347, West Lafayette 47907-2050, IN, USA.
Email: sheadworth@purdue.edu
Punishment & Society
2021, Vol. 23(1) 24–46
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520928131
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Welfare’s history is substantially a history of exclusion. In the United States, pol-
icies restricting assistance to the “truly deserving” have entailed partial or total
exclusion for people held outside of that category, especially people of color (Fox,
2012; Neubeck and Cazenave, 2001). Stated motivations for these restrictions typ-
ically emphasize withholding aid from able-bodied people of working age, reason-
ing that such people should be held individually responsible for improving their
own lots in life (Katz 2013[1989]). This version of a social safety net entails sig-
nificant administrative tasks of specifying the parameters of eligibility categories
and delineating between people who are in and out of those categories. Beyond
these category construction and sorting tasks, this approach also creates pressure
to police boundaries between the ineligible and the eligible to ensure that people
have been accurately categorized and reduce illegitimate interlopers’ presence
among clients. Identifying legitimate aid claimants—and excluding illegitimate
claimants—are core processes of US public assistance programs. These exclusion
processes pertain particularly to stigmatized means-tested “welfare” programs,
rather than more positively regarded “entitlement” programs for other groups
deemed more deserving of assistance, such as older people and people with dis-
abilities (see Gordon, 1994).
US welfare administration agencies maintain dedicated fraud control units
charged with detecting, investigating, and substantiating clients’ rule violations.
These units help bureaucracies identify and exclude illegitimate participants.
Their rationale invokes the idea of widespread deliberate, malicious program
abuses, reflecting racialized and gendered stigma against the poor and means-
tested public assistance participants (Gans, 1995; Gilens, 1999; Hancock, 2004;
Katz 1996[1986]). Fraud investigations focus particularly on clients’ disqualifying
actions: purposeful acts of misrepresentation to gain eligibility or increase benefit
allotments, or misusing benefit resources (for instance, engaging in Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) trafficking by exchanging SNAP benefits
for cash or goods). Establishing deliberate rule breaking allows welfare agencies to
go beyond detecting overpayments and adjusting benefit amounts; Intentional
Program Violations (IPVs) carry exclusionary consequences, via temporary
client suspensions and permanent disqualifications. Fraud control units also
refer some deliberate fraud allegations to prosecutors’ offices for criminal charges.
These dedicated fraud investigation units demonstrate punitive adversarialism
within the US welfare system. Punitive adversarialism refers to the institutionali-
zation of surveillance, investigation, formal charging processes, and punishments
within bureaucratic structure. The word “adversarial” does double duty in the
term. First, it denotes the word’s jurisprudential meaning, referring to a legal
system that uses oppositional contests between parties to adjudicate disputes
and assess legal liabilities (Kagan, 2001).
1
US welfare programs are generally
adversarial in this sense, and “tend to rely on detailed rules and rights, enforceable
in court” (Kagan, 2001:159). This tendency offers some rights-claiming opportu-
nities, but also pressures officials to pursue comprehensive client oversight and
enforce punctilious rule adherence. Dedicated fraud control units constitute
Headworth 25
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