An Examination of Welfare Fraud Outcomes in Texas

Abstract This article examines racial disparities in the criminal prosecution of welfare fraud, analysing how ostensibly race-neutral enforcement of federal benefit programmes produces differential outcomes across demographic groups. The research investigates whether theoretical predictions about poverty criminalization manifest in actual prosecution patterns when controlling for legally relevant factors. Administrative court records from Harris County, Texas, provided data on all welfare fraud prosecutions filed across 24 courts from 1990 to 2023 (N = 7,757). Descriptive analyses examined defendant demographics and case outcomes, while multinomial logistic regression assessed racial effects on sentencing, controlling for gender, legal representation, and bond amounts. The overrepresentation of Black individuals among welfare fraud defendants is substantial. African Americans comprised 70% of defendants despite representing 18% of families living in poverty, with women constituting 90.2% of those prosecuted. Regression analyses revealed African American defendants were significantly more likely to receive incarceration only, while white defendants more often received fines only, with racial disparities persisting across all sentencing categories when controlling for available covariates. These findings support theoretical frameworks positioning welfare fraud prosecution as a mechanism of racialized social control disproportionately affecting Black women navigating federal assistance programmes. Results demonstrate how criminal justice systems across the United States may systematically transform survival strategies among economically marginalized populations into felony convictions, suggesting the need for fundamental reconsideration of prosecutorial approaches to poverty-related programme violations. Citation: Whiting, Serita, Shannon Davenport, and Howard Henderson, ‘An Examination of Welfare Fraud Outcomes in Texas: From Food Stamps to Handcuffs and the Racialized War on Intersectional Disadvantage’ (28 Jan. 2026), in Delores Jones-Brown (ed.), Police and Criminal Justice, in Meena Dhanda (ed.), Oxford Intersections: Racism by Context (Oxford, online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Mar. 2025 -), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945246.003.0135, accessed [date].