Social and Criminal Policy and the Regulation of Prisoners' Family Lives in the late 20th Century United States

The last quarter of twentieth century United States history is typically portrayed as an era of state retrenchment and declining from government intervention in society. This paper explores how connecting the history of crime policy and welfare policy (particularly AFDC—the program providing cash assistance to poor parents) forces a rethinking about the state’s interactions with the most subordinated families in the era of “small government.” It argues that public policy reflected key assumptions about the subjectivity and social connections of incarcerated, poor men of color from urban areas, particularly that they are unwanted or irrelevant to the economic and social welfare of their families. It explores how the notion that prisoners were atomized or should be expelled from society rationalized a series of policies that put intense pressure on the families and social webs in which they actually remained deeply enmeshed. I explore political debates at the federal level and state level (New York and California) during the 1980s and 1990s that reflected assumptions about prisoners’ families, particularly around prison locations, phone calls, conjugal visits, barring felons from public housing, and prohibitions on using welfare funds for bail money. Connecting these welfare and criminal policies reveals that the state effectively erected impediments to family cohesion at the same time as politicians pathologized communities of color for "broken homes" and an alleged “culture of poverty."