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"A book of incredible scope, complexity, and erudition, The Upper Limit shows how paying the lowest possible wages to workers at the bottom of the labor market makes us all less secure." —Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block
"An original and valuable addition to the field of contemporary punishment and society studies." —Alessandro De Giorgi, author of Re-thinking the Political Economy of Punishment
“The concept of less eligibility is essential for understanding social control policies in the modern world. This book offers readers an excellent account of how this concept explains the trajectories of punishment and welfare policy in America. It should be read by everyone with an interest in these important subjects.” —Ahmed White, author of The Last Great Strike
List of contents
Illustrations
Introduction
1 Upper Limit
2 Great Adjustment
3 Crime Drop and the East New York Renaissance
4 Necessity of Harsh Policing
5 Prisoner Reentry in Public Housing
6 Nonprofits: Welfare of the Cheap
7 Reengineering Less Eligibility: The New York Homeless Shelter Industry
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
References
Index
About the author
François Bonnet is Research Fellow in Sociology and Political Science at CNRS, the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Summary
Since 1993, crime in the United States has fallen to historic lows, seeming to legitimize the country’s mix of welfare reform and mass incarceration. The Upper Limit explains how this unusual mix came about, examining how, beginning in the 1970s, declining living standards for the poor have defined social and penal policy in the United States, making welfare more restrictive and punishment harsher. François Bonnet shows how low-wage work sets the upper limit of social and penal policy, where welfare must be less attractive than low-wage work and criminal life must be less attractive than welfare. In essence, the living standards of the lowest class of workers in a society determine the upper limit for the generosity of welfare and for the humanity of punishment in that society. The Upper Limit explores the local consequences of this punitive adjustment in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood where crime fell in the 1990s. Bonnet argues that no meaningful penal reform can happen unless living standards and the minimum wage rise again. Enlightening and provocative, The Upper Limit provides a comprehensive theory of the evolution of social and penal policy.
Additional text
"The Upper Limit will be of wide interest to sociologists and criminologists concerned with social order, inequality, and punishment. It makes important theoretical contributions to research on? ?social policy and penal transformation?. . . . ?In a contemporary moment defined by the human and economic devastation of the global covid-19 pandemic and ongoing violence, racism, and political turmoil in the US, this book lays out what it would take to move the American social order towards greater equality and humanity.?"
