Crime and Welfare Policies Across Welfare Regimes: The Impacts of Race and Immigration in the United States and Sweden (WITHDRAWN)

Background: In the United States, racialized discourses stigmatizing perceived recipients of welfare benefits and wide racial disparities in those penalized by aggressive criminal justice system have raised new questions and insights into the racial dimension of crime and welfare policies. This has further prompted concerns that crime policy may be less related to the goals of crime reduction than to the management of poor and other marginalized populations. It has also fueled debates regarding the extent to which these trends characterize policies beyond the US border. Cross-national implications regarding such disparities are, however, inconclusive as social categories salient in the United States may take on different significance in a Western European context. US-defined racial categories are often illegible and may even be prohibited in the European context. Rather, immigrant or foreign-born status may carry more meaning for a comparative analysis.

Purpose and Methods: This paper provides a synthesis of criminological and social welfare theoretical frameworks that can explain intersections between crime and welfare policies across welfare regimes, along with empirical data illuminating developments in crime policy and welfare policy. Building upon Esping-Andersen’s classic typology of welfare regimes, this study compares the cases of the United States and Sweden since the 1970s as representing the extreme ends of both crime and welfare policy. The paper provides empirical evidence regarding the “convergence” of crime and welfare policies across welfare regimes or, conversely, arguments that social democratic regimes such as Sweden have maintained universal welfare and low crime policies. In particular, empirical data with respect to immigrant status as possible proxies for categories of race and ethnicity are explored for Sweden as a means to compare recent national data to that of the United States.

Results: Comparative empirical data supports the persistence of penal-welfarism in Sweden, while indicating more punitive policies targeting marginalized sectors of the population, notably immigrants and foreign born. In other words, a strong welfare state and penal exceptionalism may persist for “legitimate” citizens; a differentiated set of punitive policies may aim towards the management of marginalized populations, particularly the foreign-born. At the same time, the United States has begun to seriously question the outcomes of its forty-year trend towards the conditions of mass incarceration with inconclusive evidence regarding the reversal of punitive crime and welfare trends.

Conclusions and Further Research: New areas of research should not only highlight general trends in crime and welfare policies, but also investigate disproportionate impacts of these trends on the most marginalized sectors of the population. In what areas and for what populations may universal welfare measures and penal-welfarist crime policies be receding, in particular in the Northern European context? Economic and social conditions of crisis, the upheavals of war and accompanying migration, and the fragility of climate present challenges and opportunities for future policy development. Having a clearer understanding of how the discourses, practices, and policies of crime and welfare are shaped by and further shape fundamental notions of democracy, citizenship, security, and rights can benefit our ability to achieve these aims.