Serita Whiting

This study examines how race, gender, and class shape the prosecution of welfare fraud in Harris County, Texas, from 1990 to 2023. Using a mixed-methods design, the research draws on quantitative analysis of court records and qualitative interviews with defendants and their family members to investigate how economic survival strategies become criminalized through legal and administrative processes. The quantitative component documents patterns in charging, case outcomes, and sentencing, while the qualitative component captures the lived experiences and collateral consequences associated with prosecution, including debt, stigma, family strain, and the loss of public benefits. Together, these data illuminate how welfare fraud enforcement operates at the intersection of poverty governance and criminal punishment. By situating individual cases within broader patterns of inequality, the study highlights the ways punitive responses to benefit-related offenses reproduce structural disadvantage and expand the reach of the criminal legal system into the lives of economically marginalized families.