Governing Poverty: Compulsory Income Management and Crime in Australia

Exploring the politics of strain: Crime and welfare in remote Indigenous Australia

“…In Australia (as in other liberal welfare states), welfare receipt and crime are frequently discursively linked, and the supposed propensity for high levels of welfare receipt and crime to co‐occur has been used to justify punitive social policies that disproportionately affect Indigenous populations (Staines et al, 2020; Wacquant, 2009). These discourses have continued during 2020–2021, with public commentators suggesting reduced conditionality combined with access to higher unemployment benefits has been criminogenic (Roberts, 2020).…”

“…In Australia, crime metaphors are deeply racialised, with Indigenous welfare recipients being discursively represented as inclined to criminality—a depiction that is used to justify punitive and controlling welfare policies alongside intensified surveillance by both the welfare and penal states (Staines et al, 2020). This occurs, for example, through increased policing introduced alongside punitive welfare policies like ‘income management’ (Staines et al, 2020) as well as through the introduction of ‘alcohol management plans’ (AMPs), which heavily regulate the carriage and consumption of alcohol across many remote Indigenous communities, thereby ‘extend[ing] zones of criminality’ (von Sturmer & Le Marseny, 2012, p. 21). In combination, such policies increase surveillance and regulation in ways that support and perpetuate ‘…the very discourses about poverty and the poor that are used to justify [punitive welfare] and intensive policing in the first place’ (Staines et al, 2020, p. 11).…”

“…This occurs, for example, through increased policing introduced alongside punitive welfare policies like ‘income management’ (Staines et al, 2020) as well as through the introduction of ‘alcohol management plans’ (AMPs), which heavily regulate the carriage and consumption of alcohol across many remote Indigenous communities, thereby ‘extend[ing] zones of criminality’ (von Sturmer & Le Marseny, 2012, p. 21). In combination, such policies increase surveillance and regulation in ways that support and perpetuate ‘…the very discourses about poverty and the poor that are used to justify [punitive welfare] and intensive policing in the first place’ (Staines et al, 2020, p. 11). Similar ‘welfare dependency’ discourses have also re‐emerged in response to Australia's 2020–2021 social security changes and include unsubstantiated claims that influxes of money and mutual obligation suspensions have produced higher crime in remote Indigenous communities (e.g., Pearson in Taylor, 2020; Roberts, 2020; Urban, 2020; Wilson in Bardon, 2020; Eades, 2020)—a point we return to later.…”

‘Walking in two worlds’: A qualitative review of income management in Cape York

“…This explicit focus on welfare recipients has also been criticised in the broader literature on the basis that it is unfairly stigmatising and is not grounded in evidence (ABS, 2017; Bielefeld, 2018; Campbell, 2015; Cox, 2011; Mendes, Waugh, & Flynn, 2014), but as noted previously, the criteria for such assessments have also been questioned with the argument that the impacts of FRC Act have been differentially experienced by community members (Wyatt, 2019). In relation to Cape York, alcohol is undoubtedly a significant contributor to high levels of interpersonal harm (Clough et al., 2017; Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs, 2015; Sutton, 2009), but there is no strong evidence that welfare is a mediating factor for alcohol (Staines et al., in press). It has been argued, for example that many of the scourges that Pearson and the Cape York Institute attribute to the rise of welfare from the 1970s onwards, including heavy use of alcohol, in fact long preceded the provision of welfare in these communities (Martin, 1993, 2001; Scott et al., 2018; Watt, 2018).…”

“…22We use the term ‘quarantine’ to reflect broader political discourses about IM in Australia, though it is particularly peculiar given its relationship to notions of disease and contamination and associated conceptions of decontaminating the body politic (e.g. see Staines et al., in press).…”