ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism fundamentally has changed the nature of poverty in the United States, particularly with regard to the state’s poverty management efforts. Current research thoroughly examines how neoliberal ideologies and policies have influenced the convergence of the social welfare and criminal justice systems in the United States and the punitive turn both systems have taken since the mid-1970s (Beckett and Western, 2001; Garland, 2001; Haney, 2004, 2010; Wacquant, 2009). While federal and state governments significantly have cut funding for social welfare programs, they have invested increasing amounts of money into the corrections system, thereby contributing to the current era of mass incarceration (Beckett and Western, 2001; Wacquant, 2009). Such explicit shifts represent a coordinated effort by the state to regulate social marginality in new ways (Beckett and Western, 2001; Garland, 2001; Haney, 2004; Wacquant, 2009).
