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Title: Support Seeking, System Avoidance, and Citizenship: Social Safety Net Usage After Incarceration
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Bryan, Brielle
Support Seeking, System Avoidance, and Citizenship: Social Safety Net Usage After Incarceration
Criminology published online (03 October 2023).
Also: https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12351
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: American Society of Criminology
Keyword(s): Incarceration/Jail; Racial Equality/Inequality; Racial Studies; Rights Claiming; System Avoidance; Welfare

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Scholars have long described the American penal state and welfare state as joined by a common logic of social marginalization. But researchers have only recently begun to explore how the individuals who pass through the carceral system also interact with welfare state programs. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, in this article, I explore how formerly incarcerated individuals make claims on the welfare state and how participation varies across social programs and states, as well as by race, drawing on theories of social welfare rights-claiming and system avoidance. In so doing, I provide the first nationwide estimates of the extent to which previously incarcerated adults use social safety net resources. I find that participation in welfare programs varies with incarceration history, program structure, and race. Rather than finding patterns consistent with system avoidance, I find that previously incarcerated White Americans seem to engage in active rights claiming, participating in public assistance programs more than similarly eligible never-incarcerated counterparts. All formerly incarcerated individuals, however, have limited access to more generous social insurance programs, and the shift to an increasingly employment-based social safety net seems likely to further limit access to the welfare state for the growing population of Americans leaving prison.
Bibliography Citation
Bryan, Brielle. "Support Seeking, System Avoidance, and Citizenship: Social Safety Net Usage After Incarceration." Criminology published online (03 October 2023).