Neoliberalism is characterized as one of the ideational driving forces for societal and political change in Western democracies, which resulted in a variety of changes in different realms of politics and society. These modifications include, a retreat of the interventionist state, a shrinking welfare state characterized by increased individual responsibility, less generous benefits, and an emphasis on workfare. Workfare is a welfare program in which recipients are required to perform public service work to receive welfare benefits. An increase in the aforementioned driving forces also led to an expanded penal state, as defined by a transition towards harsher punishment in Western liberal democracies.^[1]

Neoliberalism gained notoriety across a multitude of countries, regions, and regimes; however, the rise of neoliberalism in the Western world is most notably associated with the United States President Ronald Reagan (1981–1988). Reagan aimed to abolish Keynesian style “big government” in order to replace it with neoliberalism. Not only did Reagan articulate the core ideologies of neoliberalism, he was also determined to convert them into public policies and programs.^[2] Prior to the implementation of neoliberalism policies, social programs were controlled by the national government; however, the neoliberal mode of governance instituted major reform initiatives in social policy. Programs and policies that were aimed at helping the poor, were gradually delegated to the states. Furthermore, neoliberalism introduced the popular conception and support for colorblind policies which diverted attention away from structural racial inequalities and emphasized the individual’s responsibility as the primary cause for criminal behavior.^[3]

Loïc Wacquant in his book Punishing the Poor examines the rise of mass incarceration in the United States while simultaneously demonstrating through theoretical delineation the impact of transforming social and penal policies on the poor.^[4] Wacquant argues that the increasingly punitive management of the poor is accomplished through the dual processes of social welfare reform and penal expansion and control.^[5] Through the political philosophy of neoliberalism, Wacquant argues, the United States shifted from a welfare state to penal state. As mentioned, the United States used the neoliberalism ideology to further its economic goals through social control. To fulfill its project, the United States decreased welfare spending and coincidently added to the penal budgets.^[6] From 1976 to 1985 the percentage of government spending on social welfare decreased 8.7%, from 60.3% to 51.6%.^[7] With this decrease in welfare spending there was a simultaneous increase in the total state expenditures on corrections in the United States.

Since the nineteenth century, Americans have been intrigued by the study of criminology and punishing the criminal, and these ideologies continuously permeate within society. According to The Sentencing Project, the United States is the world’s leader in incarceration, which is illustrated by Figure 1. Within the United States there are 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, which is a 500% increase over the last forty years.^[8] 

As argued, this dramatic increase in prison rates can be attributed to changes in law and policy, and not solely to changes in crime rates. Beginning in the 1970s the United States penal system transitioned from rehabilitative to punitive. Prior to neoliberalism penal welfarism states that prisoners should have the right and be given positive motivation to gain opportunities for advancement within the criminal justice system. Simultaneously, neoliberal policies which assisted in the transformation of the punitive system and changed the “culture of control” began to form. The “culture of control,” coined by sociologist David Garland, aims to explain the movement from penal welfarism to the “crime control complex.”^[9] According to Garland, “the culture of control” encompasses new practices of controlling behavior and completing justice through punitive practices of policing, prosecuting, sentencing and penal sanctions.^[10]

Although political, economic, cultural, and sociological factors contributed to the implementation of neoliberal policies in the United States, perhaps the most important to analyze are the sociological institutions. Garland argues that although the field of crime control has a “certain autonomy,” any significant change in the field’s configuration will correlate to changes in other sociological institutions, such as the legal system, labor market, and welfare state institutions.^[11] It appears that when society’s perception of crime and punishment changed, along with the increased acceptance of neoliberalism, the role of the welfare system in society also changed.

As argued, the United States’ criminal justice system transitioned from a welfare to penal state that placed emphasis on punitive rather than rehabilitative measures. From the 1830s until the 1970s, the attempt to alter the behavior of offenders was primary in laws and policies, but beginning in the 1980s, rehabilitation was replaced by ideologies that stressed deterrence, due process, and “just deserts” for offenses. These transitions caused by changes in cultural values in the United States have impacted policy, the suggestions scholars make about law, influenced sentencing policies, and led to a decrease in the level of humane treatment in prisons.^[12] The belief that human character and conduct can be shaped by social institutions in ways to serve public purposes was the prominent cultural change that is reflected through neoliberal policies.^[13]

Work has always been an important component of American political culture and has shaped policies aimed at poor families since the nation’s founding.^[14] Beginning with the New Deal through the 1960s, federal policies considered work to be a social obligation and determined that a job should deliver a basic livelihood. Post-1960s, under President Reagan, the government pursued an agenda of retrenchment and rollback through budget cuts, eligibility restrictions, and escalating work requirements.

In the United States, the welfarist system slowly transformed into a workfarist system. Under New Deal welfarism, the guiding principle was government entitlement. To measure the success of the welfare system the government evaluated the policy’s ability to provide income assistance to those who were eligible. On the other hand, under workfare, the guiding principle was market incentives. The desired result of workfare was to promote, require, and reward work among all poor adults who were physically able to perform it. To measure the success of the workfare system, the government examined the policy’s ability to ensure workforce participation, reduce reliance on government assistance, and allow the market to determine the functions of job allocation and wage setting.^[15}

The 1980s brought about a new understanding regarding poverty and crime. The poorer class and incarcerated no longer were seen to lack education, but were viewed as lacking values which was exacerbated by the government.^[16] As a result of the perceived lack of values, welfare led to teenage pregnancy and the breakdown of the family.^[17] According to government officials, broken families were seen as unable to instill children with “family values” and continued illegitimacy, poverty, drug and crime were the result.^[18] Through this narrative, the poor and incarcerated were construed as lacking family values and being irrational agents. As a result, they were perceived as choosing welfare and crime over low pay and hard work.^[19] Government officials argued that the poor and those incarcerated make these choices, knowing that welfare would provide them with an income and the criminal justice system would not punish them severely. This conceptualization of the poor and incarcerated is critical to the transition from a welfare to workfare state because it emphasizes that these populations will not respond to “positive incentives,” but only to disincentive or deterrence of sanction and punishment.^[20] This conceptualization further individualizes the causes of crime and punishment, which appears to legitimize the retrenchment of social welfare programs that focused on structural causes of inequality.

Under Reagan’s presidency, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1981 proposed deep cutbacks to the welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and imposed stringent work requirements. The initial OBRA proposal would have established mandatory “work experience programs” for all “able-bodied” welfare recipients unable to find jobs in the private sector.^[21] In return of this work, recipients would receive AFDC benefits. Although these work requirements were never enacted, this proposal demonstrates the ideological shift to neoliberalism. The two prominent perspectives of this period were that the poor cannot make the right choices and the government possessed limited capabilities to intervene effectively. This combined set of ideas about causes, the target population, the proper role of government, and dismantling welfare becomes a plausible solution to the problem of poverty.^[22] As a result, rather than providing “positive incentives for work,” welfare reform proposals became punitive since the government deemed that people needed to be forced to work and conversely deprived the poor of readily available monies. Again, these “positive incentives” emphasize the individual’s responsibility for poverty and crime rather than focus on the structural causes that exist. In the future, attempts at welfare reform would entail the principle that government would help people, but only if they took the personal responsibility to help themselves. These welfare reform proposals would assist people in gaining the perceived values that they lacked, and if that failed, the government would impose and enforce values.^[23]

Under President Clinton (1993–2001), the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (PRWOA) replaced AFDC with the more restrictive “work first” program entitled Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This program emphasizes employment in the paid labor market regardless of the quality of the position or wages paid over the building of human capital via education and workforce training.^[24] Under PRWOA, low-income families are no longer entitled to receive cash aid even if they meet eligibility criteria and TANF recipients must adhere to strict time limits and work requirements, or risk full or partial family sanctions, such as reduced benefits. Through neoliberal policies, the government aims to instill “positive values” such as a strong work ethic and the importance of a cohesive family unit in the socially marginalized; however, rather than assisting low-wage workers to develop marketable skills, or provide hands-on training that can build skills, and help pave the way to better-paying positions, the opposite has occurred.^[25] Ultimately, work requirements constrain low-wage workers’ options and bargaining power, leaving them with the “choice” to accept insufficient wages regardless of the conditions or turn to aid and work for their benefits.^[26]

Presently, neoliberalism continues to influence welfare reform. With the release of former President Trump’s Executive Order, Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility, the drive to implement and enforce strict work requirements has accelerated. To promote tougher work requirements, the Executive Order draws upon typical neoliberal arguments that welfare programs foster dependency and cause hardship.^[27] The Executive Order seeks to “improve employment outcomes and economic independence, including by strengthening existing work requirements for work-capable people and introducing new work requirements when legally permissible.”^[28]

Work requirements are founded on the fundamental assumption that low-income individuals will only work if they are forced. Again, this perception focuses on the individual’s responsibility to elevate themselves out of poverty, rather than focus on structural issues, such as racism, housing barriers, or disparities in education that can aid in the prevention of employment. This claim does not align with reality since most low-income individuals who are eligible to work do so, but their wages are too low to lift them out of poverty.^[29] The introduction of workfare as a requirement to receive welfare is inherently punitive because these harsh policies push individuals and families who are not stably employed further into poverty by withdrawing access to food, healthcare, and shelter.  Since work requirements continue to reduce participation in safety net programs, they are deemed to be punitive.

In 1972, the criminal justice system was experimenting with alternative sentencing schemes to minimize the use of incarceration. Since this trial-and-error period, welfare expenditures have dropped by over 60% and the number of prison inmates has increased from approximately 200,000 in 1970 to an excess of $1.5 million in 2016 with an additional $4.5 million people on probation or parole.^[30] As illustrated by Figure 2, beginning in 1980, there was a dramatic increase in the United States prison population and, since then the number of people incarcerated has not significantly changed.

In his book The Decline of the Rehabilitative Ideal in American Criminal Justice Francis Allen argues that in the late twentieth century the government was no longer concerned with the well-being of the offender, but solely with the effects that criminals have on society. Superficially, rehabilitation is associated with a positive denotation; however, it is a subjective term. In the past, techniques have included the whip and the club, depth psychology, or efforts to overcome illiteracy and training in job skills.^[31] Until the mid-sixties and early seventies, the rehabilitative ideal was the prominent American theory of penal treatment.^[32] During this time period, a consensus existed between the public, the courts, and academia that the main objective of the criminal justice system was rehabilitation which is demonstrated through institutions, such as the juvenile court, systems of probation and parole, indeterminate sentencing, and the promise of therapeutic programs in the prisons.^[33] On the other hand, by abandoning the rehabilitative ideal in the late 20th century, society no longer supported positive rehabilitation, but instead focused on elevated punitive measures, such as the elimination of the parole function, certainty in sentencing, or mandatory minimum sentences.^[34]

As demonstrated by Figure 2, within two decades between 1980 and 2000 the U.S. State and Federal Prison population increased by 300% from around 316,000 to nearly 1.4 million.^[35] The impact of these developments has fallen disproportionately on young African Americans and Latinos. By 1994, one of every three black males between the ages of 18–34 was under some form of correctional supervision and the number of Hispanic prisoners has more than quadrupled since 1980.^[36] Not only did African Americans and Latinos experience higher incarceration rates but are also in the highest group of welfare recipients, as illustrated by Appendix Figure A. As a result, it is not surprising that the same demographic who lost welfare benefits is the same group that is imprisoned at higher rates. In short, both penal and social policy have become harsher and more exclusionary.

“(1) sentencing guidelines that limit judicial discretion at sentencing, (2) mandatory sentences and mandatory minimums that stipulate statutorily required minimum terms of imprisonment for certain offenses, (3) truth-in-sentencing statutes that require that certain offenders serve fully 85 percent of their sentences, (4) more stringent habitual offender legislation, often in the form of a “three-strikes and you’re out” initiative, that allows for a sentence of 25 years to life upon the third felony conviction, and (5) expanded restrictions on the use (and in some states the complete elimination) of discretionary parole release.”^[37]

In addition to these punitive measures, the United States has also returned to more degrading forms of punishment, including chain-gangs, the death penalty, and solitary confinement. Some criminologists have even argued for corporal punishment or the use of punitive comas which render convicted offenders unconscious for an unknown period of time.^[38] These archaic and inhumane practices demonstrate the punitive escalation and the entrenchment of neoliberalism in the United States. 

Both penal and social policy target the socially marginalized, such as minorities who are the greatest recipients of welfare. Inclusive regimes, such as the United States prior to the rise of neoliberalism, placed a greater emphasis on social causes of marginality and made an effort to integrate the socially marginalized into society, which is assisted through welfare.^[39] In direct contrast, exclusive regimes, such as the United States from the 1970s to the present, emphasize individual responsibility, depict the socially marginalized as undeserving of aid, and develop exclusionary policies, such as imprisonment to control these populations.^[40]

As illustrated by Appendix Figure A, starting from 1980, there consistently has been a larger percentage of African American and Hispanic welfare recipients than Whites. The United States’ transition to a punitive state ultimately decreased the welfare state through major budget cuts. For example, driven by an individualistic philosophy, OBRA removed nearly half a million working families from AFDC rolls between 1981 and 1983.^[41] Furthermore, the number of families receiving AFDC declined by 44% between 1993 and 1998, and the average benefit payment to families entitled to AFDC has also declined from $376 in 1975 to $220 in 1995 (measured in 1983 dollars).^[42] As a result of these cuts, along with others, the United States continuously excluded a portion of society who fell at the end of the economic spectrum, and this marginalized population seemed to turn to crime to support their needs. Consequently, with the rise of imprisonment, this same group also endured a more punitive criminal justice system.

“American punishment is comparatively harsh, comparatively degrading, comparatively slow to show mercy…Over the last quarter-century, America has shown a systematic drive toward increased harshness…while continental Europe has not.” ^[43]

Although there are numerous methods that execute cruel punishment, such as the death penalty or shame sanctions, I focused on the use of solitary confinement, also known as the “hole” or “SHU,” as a form of punishment. The use of solitary confinement has preceded the establishment of prisons, but beginning in the early 1970s prison and jail administrators at the federal, state, and local level have relied increasingly on isolation and segregation to control men, women, and youth in their custody.^[44] The expansion of supermax prisons across the United States is a result of the government’s toughness on crime and the punitive shift in penology away from welfarism rehabilitation toward retribution and control.^[45]

Imprisonment is already a method of social control, but now through solitary confinement the state can have absolute control. Solitary confinement emerged as a standard form of punishment with the establishment of the penitentiary system in the early nineteenth century.^[46] The creation of a supermax penology directly correlates to the retributive, deterrent, and incapacitated attributes of the penal state.^[47] Solitary confinement conditions vary from state to state and between correctional facilities; however, common conditions include, but are not limited to:

• Confinement behind a solid steel door for 22 to 24 hours a day
• Severely limited contact with other human beings
• Infrequent phone calls and rare non-contact family visits
• Limited access to rehabilitative or educational programs
• Grossly inadequate medical and mental health treatment
• Physical torture, such as hog-tying, or restraint chairs^[48]

Essentially, solitary confinement is a prison within prison. Regardless of the prison, the cells in the SHU are typically seven by twelve feet, with a stainless steel toilet-sink and a tiny metal bed bunk, as illustrated by Appendix Figure B.^[49] As demonstrated by the attributes listed above, the goal of solitary confinement is to disrupt the basic vectors of human experience through compliance and control, and it is not shocking that with the rise of neoliberal policies the use of solitary confinement increased.^[50] Solitary confinement was created with the intention to further rehabilitate those incarcerated; however, the effects of solitary confinement do not rehabilitate, but rather as stated by Charles Dickens, “devours the victim mercifully incessantly and mercifully.”^[51]

Capital punishment may end a person’s biological life, but solitary confinement prolongs social, mental, and biological death.^[52] In order to fully understand life in solitary confinement, I had the opportunity to interview an inmate who lived in solitary confinement for six months, during his time at the Federal Correctional Institution of Fort Dix, located in New Jersey. To protect the identity of my source, I am going to refer to him as Joe throughout my paper. In detail, Joe explained the physical and mental abuses he endured while in solitary confinement, including recurring hallucinations and not receiving proper medical attention for a fistula that developed in his mouth which could have led to death if it had traveled to his brain.

After he spent six months in solitary confinement, I asked Joe, “What was the worst part of your time in solitary confinement?”  His response was “the deafening silence and loss of human dignity.” In addition to the dehumanization of an individual, even the vocabulary used to describe aspects of solitary confinement, such as the “cage” which compares humans to animals, demonstrates the harshness of the punitive system.^[53]

As documented by Appendix Figure C, between 1995 and 2000, the growth rate in the number of people housed in segregation outpaced the growth rate of the overall prison population, from 40% compared to 28% respectively. This increase in the use of solitary confinement is alarming because housing a prisoner in segregation is twice as costly as other forms of confinement.^[54] The average per-cell cost of housing an inmate in solitary confinement is $75,000 annually compared to the $25,000 for an inmate in general population.^[55] This statement demonstrates that the government rather spend more money on solitary confinement when these funds can be budgeted towards other methods of actual rehabilitation. In addition to higher operating costs, the construction of supermax prisons have consistently higher construction costs of two or three times higher than maximum-security prisons which is the prison level directly below supermaxes.^[56]