The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

Since the great welfare reforms of the mid-1990s, when Bill Clinton broke up the traditional welfare state and introduced reforms like workfare and the end to permanent cash aid, the entire welfare apparatus has gone through a transformation, wherein thousands of people who were caseworkers previously became fraud investigators under the new system. “Sometimes, they even kept the same offices,” says Gustafson. “They would take a welfare caseworker, retrain him or her to be a fraud investigator, and put him or her back in the same desk.” In many places (and San Diego is one such place), the welfare caseworkers and fraud investigators working for the DA’s office actually work out of the same building, wing, or office.