The Criminalization of Poverty in Canada

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Background and Socio-Historical Concept of Theory
What are the Important Concepts and Arguments?
How these Concerns Emerge in Existing Policies?
Why is this Topic Significant Today?
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Many countries have made significant strides in improving the welfare of their citizens. Arguably, poverty has declined in many liberal democracies, such as America and Canada. However, it remains a huge impediment to social and economic development in most of these countries (Gustafson 644). In this regard, many countries grapple with the problem of identifying the best strategies for managing the social, economic and political problems associated with low income.

Historically, Canada has financed many social welfare programs for the poor (Ismaili et al. 248). America has also had similar programs, such as the Medicare and Medicaid programs, designed for the poor. Although these programs have been around for many decades, there has been a shifting public policy regarding the economic viability and morality of sustaining such programs (Gustafson 644). Particularly, such concerns manifest in today’s uncertain economic times because governments struggle with huge wage bills and low tax collections (Gustafson 644). Therefore, it is becoming untenable for such institutions to finance such programs. However, this is only one way of looking at the poverty issue.

The criminalization of poverty is an alternative view of managing the social, economic, and political problems associated with poverty. This view stems from a wider philosophical thought that sees the end of social welfare programs as a way of punishing the poor (Stevens 106). This paper investigates this perception, in detail, by understanding the policy shift that underscores the transformation of public focus, from the social welfare approach to a market-based (individualistic) approach.

Key segments of this paper highlight how the neo-liberal approach describes the wider social framework that has created the public policy shift of welfare improvement. In this regard, with a special focus on Canada, the objective of this essay is to investigate how public policy has transformed alongside the public perception of social welfare reform. Similarly, this paper aims to identify the background and socio-historical context of the public policy shift.

Background and Socio-Historical Concept of Theory

In the last couple of decades, criminal law has changed to reflect the changing nature of welfare systems. The Canadian government has championed this shift by advancing a peculiar perception of viewing poor people as a “criminal class” (Wacquant 401). In Canada, this treatment has manifested at local, state, and federal levels. At the center of this policy shift is a growing concern about welfare fraud. The statistics of people getting irregular welfare payments have worried policymakers because it means unscrupulous people are abusing social welfare programs for personal gain. To mitigate this problem, policymakers seek better ways of making sure that all people who get state welfare funds are eligible entrants of the program (Ismaili et al. 248).

Such concerns have created a tight policy framework for welfare recipients (Stevens 106). Here, the government aims to identify and prosecute poor people who flout existing regulations on welfare entitlement and those that fail to comply with existing welfare rules. Some jurisdictions in Canada have pursued such welfare reforms with a lot of zeal (only akin to prosecuting criminals).

Wacquant (402) says this social welfare reform stems from a wider socioeconomic reaction to social insecurity and disorder, fuelled by the adoption of neo-liberal policies in western countries. In his view, social-welfare retrenchments and economic deregulation explain the criminalization of poverty by western countries (Wacquant 402). This attribute also emerges in a wider realm of political reform that underscores state transformations. The mutations of wage labor and social power struggles have created these transformations (Wacquant 402).

In such struggles, the owners of the factors of production have taken most of the political control and now shape political power structures by wanting to reconstruct public authority (Wacquant 403). Social deregulations, and an increasing outflow of wage-based employment opportunities, have further compounded this issue by creating an unmanageable “working poverty” in Canada and other developed countries. In this regard, the social welfare reform movement is a tool deployed by the state “to check the disorders generated by the diffusion of social insecurity” (Wacquant 402).

What are the Important Concepts and Arguments?

The criminalization of poverty stems from a wider neo-liberal movement that started in the 1980s. This movement highlighted the difficulty of financing government operations through taxes. Instead, it proposed an alternative view of government financing from a marketplace standpoint (Wacquant 402). This ideological shift affects public policies on poverty because governments finance social welfare programs through state taxes. These programs add to the public wage bill.

A market-based approach would change the social welfare framework because it would lead to the abolishment of taxes that finance such programs and instead support the development of policies that promote market growth (Ismaili et al. 250). In line with this reasoning, Ismaili et al. say, “As many costs as possible should be shifted from the state and back on to the individuals, and markets, particularly labor markets, should be made as flexible as possible” (251).

Here, it is important to understand that the presumption underlying the neo-liberal model is to create favorable conditions for market growth (Gaetz 359). This precondition involves eliminating market restriction and promoting free trade. In such instances, governments, which promote economic growth, believe that they will empower their people by eliminating programs that give them direct help (money, food or otherwise) and adopting new programs that promote social growth through market development (Gaetz 359). Therefore, through market improvements, economies are bound to empower the people in a more sustainable way, as opposed to relying on (limited) state funds to finance welfare programs.

Gaetz (359) says the criminalization of poverty and the use of punitive mechanisms to manage marginalized people is old. In this regard, he says this trend has its roots in the 19^th century, when governments used different legal measures to manage homelessness (Gaetz 359). Therefore, he deems it insufficient to use contemporary ideological shifts to explain the criminalization of poverty in western countries. Particularly, it is important to understand how the criminalization of poverty interacts with other political, social, and economic factors to explain the development of punitive approaches for managing poverty.

Although this paper has used the neo-liberalism concept to explain the development of punitive laws to manage poverty, it is important to understand that neo-liberalism does not only act on law enforcement and policy development, but also on how to manage basic social and welfare goods (Gaetz 360). After understanding this view, it is also imperative to understand that, in Canada, neo-liberal shifts in policy development preceded welfare reform.

Gaetz (360) adds to the above understanding by saying that the policing culture of a country also explains why some countries criminalize poverty. Here, policing includes many law enforcement issues, such as how different jurisdictions address crime.

There could be some jurisdictional interchanges of these practices. For example, the Canadian police adopted the “Broken windows” policing from the New York police (Gaetz 360). The policing dynamics of a place play a crucial role in explaining this phenomenon. For example, Toronto is Canada’s biggest and safest city (Gaetz 360). It has a policing budget of more than a billion dollars. Based on this policing background, law enforcement officers in the city often arrest their subjects for minor offenses. Marginalized people are often victims of such arrests.

How these Concerns Emerge in Existing Policies?

Some people could argue that the social welfare reform builds on traditional perceptions of poor people as lazy and petty criminals (Wacquant 402). Media perceptions about longstanding prejudices surrounding poor people fuel these perceptions. Although the social welfare reform is happening, it does not explain why it is happening in Canada and other developed states (mainly) because many countries around the world also experience the challenge of managing poor people, yet they have not taken such drastic measures of criminalizing poverty. Gaetz (359) says the answer for this question lies in understanding the political framework of a country and its social dynamics. These circumstances often create the right conditions for the social reform.

The cultural dynamics of Canada and its contribution to the social welfare reform started in the late 1990s when there was growing outrage about the growing number of homeless people on the streets, who begged for food and other items (Gaetz 359). Politicians started fuelling prejudice against such people by terming them a “nuisance” and a threat to the country’s tourism sector. In line with such concerns, major Canadian cities, such as Montreal and Toronto enacted legislations that outlawed begging (Gaetz 359).

Others have enacted similar laws that restrict the use of public spaces, where the beggars live (Wacquant 402). One law that emerged during this period was the Ontario Safe Streets Act (Gaetz 359). Although it did not openly mention poor people as its main target, it made it difficult for them to use public spaces and such like areas. Besides these regulations, Canadian activists pointed out that law enforcement officials had additional legislations they could use to maintain law and order in public places, or address other concerns introduced by the discriminatory pieces of legislation (Gaetz 359).

For example, Canada had laws that criminalized “jaywalking,” drinking in public places and loitering (Gaetz 359). Law enforcement officials have often used these laws against marginalized communities, the youth and the poor (Ismaili et al. 250).

Significant socioeconomic transformations inform the policy development process in Canada. For example, important pieces of legislation introduced in the 1990s emerged from these concerns (Gaetz 359). In the early 1990s, Canada stopped a public housing project that developed more than 180,000 units for low-income people (Gaetz 359). The reasoning behind this move was that market interventions would naturally solve the country’s housing problems.

However, this outcome did not suffice. Moreover, conservative governments at the provincial level continued to cut welfare funding, thereby further reducing the effectiveness of social welfare programs. The predicament of low-income people further worsened when the economic restructuring process reduced the wage rate for this demographic. Gaetz (359) says this situation led to increased homelessness in the country. Consequently, responding to the needs of low-income people has been confined to the introduction of emergency services at the expense of identifying long-term strategies that could solve the numerous social, political, and economic challenges that this population experiences.

Comprehensively, one could say that most politicians introduced most of the new laws that aimed to criminalize poverty, for selfish reasons. Stated differently, lawmakers introduced such laws to seem “tough on crime.” Stevens (106) supports this assertion by saying that most policymakers are starting to perceive poor people as a public safety threat. Instead of helping the poor to get out of their predicament, these policymakers continue to spread their penal nets.

In this regard, they are making the use of social welfare programs and policies punishable through fines and jail time (Stevens 106). These actions are part of a wider social and political movement called gentrification. The key hallmark of this movement is the introduction of strict controls on the consumption of public goods and services (Stevens 106). This understanding explains why the local political and social context of a country creates the right conditions for the introduction of punitive laws that criminalize poverty.

Why is this Topic Significant Today?

The criminalization of poverty is an important topic to present-day societies because many governments are struggling with the problem of seeking long-term methods of improving the well-being of low-income people (Spencer-Wood and Matthews 1). For example, in the health care sector, America struggles with a perennial problem of adopting a universal health care scheme that would cater for the needs of all income groups (historically, high-income populations have received quality health care, while low income groups suffer poor access to health care). There are also endless debates to explore the viability of maintaining socialist welfare schemes to help poor people to gain access to basic needs.

These concerns stem from a wider shift in public focus that has mainly concentrated on highlighting the plight of the “nouveau poor.” For example, media attention from the 2007/2008 financial crisis focused on the plight of the middle class, as opposed to the plight of low-income groups. Consequently, global headlines focused on highlighting the plight of middle-income people who had a job, a house, a car (and such basic social and economic amenities), as opposed to people who did not have a job, or any income at all.

The gap between the rich and the poor is also high, compared to 20 years ago (Spencer-Wood and Matthews 1). However, with the changing social welfare movement, it is becoming increasingly difficult to understand how these poor populations would survive in a hostile society where people are increasingly seeing them as “a bother” and as victims of their circumstances. This concern reflects a wider concern expressed by Ismaili et al. (250) when they said that Canada has never had an in-depth public policy management program for managing poverty in the country. Stevens (106) also acknowledges that the problem associated with managing poverty in Canada is highly gendered and racial.

Women and ethnic minorities have a bigger problem getting out of the poverty cycle because of family responsibilities and structural impediments in the labor sector, which deny them an opportunity to work, or get fair wages.

Comprehensively, it is important to understand that there has not been an increased empathy for the poor, although social reform for managing poverty is happening. Instead, many liberal democracies (especially in North America) view poor people as victims of their failure to make the right life choices (Ismaili et al. 250). By receiving blame for their economic marginalization, many societies increasingly see the poor as the “enemy within.” An underlying connotation to this view is the perception that such people are lazy and undignified. In this regard, societies stigmatize poor people because of their economic situations (Ismaili et al. 250).

Conclusion

The criminalization of poverty in Canada is a process that has occurred in other western countries as well. High incarceration rates and the enactment of punitive laws are evidences of this trend. The neo-liberal view is at the center of the social welfare reform movement because it has created a perceptual shift of social welfare programs from the reliance on taxes to the dependence on market-based solutions for social and economic growth. The social and political context of a country outlines the pace of social welfare reform in a country. This paper has mainly focused on the Canadian context by showing how its political and social dynamics have accelerated the adoption of social welfare reform.

Comprehensively, most of the social, political and economic dynamics, highlighted in this paper, appeal to the Canadian context. However, they also reflect a wider social and political movement that is taking place in most liberal democracies around the world. Nonetheless, based on the wider strength of this analysis, safely, this paper argues that social welfare reform in Canada is widely informed by its political and social context, which has created the right conditions for the criminalization of poverty. While this practice goes on in many societies, future research should explore the moral arguments underlying this trend (this paper has only explored the political and legal understanding of the movement). Such an analysis would provide us with a holistic understanding of the social welfare movement.

Works Cited

Gaetz, Stephen. “The Criminalization of Homelessness: A Canadian Perspective.” European Journal of Homelessness 7.2 (2013): 357-362. Print.

Gustafson, Kaaryn. “The Criminalization of Poverty.” J. Crim. L. & Criminology 99.3 (2009): 643-716. Print.

Ismaili, Karim, Sprott Jane and Varrma Kim. Canadian Criminal Justice Policy: Contemporary Perspectives, Ontario, CA: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.

Spencer-Wood, Suzanne and Matthews Christopher. “Impoverishment, Criminalization, and the Culture of Poverty.” Historical Archaeology 45.3 (2011): 1–10. Print.

Stevens, Dennis. Media and Criminal Justice: The CSI Effect, New York, NY: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2011. Print.

Wacquant, Loïc. “The Penalisation of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism.” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 9.1 (2001): 401–412. Print.

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