IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/polsoc/v48y2020i3p321-356.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Common Cause? Policymaking Discourse and the Prison/Welfare Trade-Off

Author

Listed:
  • Josh Guetzkow

Abstract

This article advances our understanding of the well-documented trade-off between welfare and prisons by analyzing US congressional hearings on welfare and criminal justice policies in two periods: the “Great Society†of 1961–67 and the “neoliberal†era of 1981–96. Comparing policymakers’ conceptions about the causes of poverty and crime, about poor and criminal populations, and about the proper role of government, the findings show that conceptions across policy domains are similar in each period and have changed in similar ways over time. These changes correspond to markedly different policy responses to poverty and crime in the two periods, favoring welfare over prisons in the earlier period and prisons over welfare in the later period. The article discusses the implications for an understanding of the punitive turn in public policies, for theories of social control, and for research on the role of ideas in policymaking.

Suggested Citation

  • Josh Guetzkow, 2020. "Common Cause? Policymaking Discourse and the Prison/Welfare Trade-Off," Politics & Society, , vol. 48(3), pages 321-356, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:48:y:2020:i:3:p:321-356
    DOI: 10.1177/0032329220942080
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0032329220942080
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0032329220942080?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:polsoc:v:48:y:2020:i:3:p:321-356. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.