Kaaryn S. Gustafson

Professor Gustafson is the recipient of the 2012 Herbert Jacob Book Prize for Cheating Welfare. The prize is given by the Law and Society Association and is intended to recognize new, outstanding work in law and society scholarship.

Professor Gustafson has extensive knowledge of the nation's welfare system, and how rules and regulations actually function in practice. Her research focuses on law and inequality and draws heavily upon both empirical research and critical theory. Her recently published book, Cheating Welfare: Public Assistance and the Criminalization of Poverty, challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, about welfare recipients, and about crime control policies in the United States. In addition to her academic writing, Gustafson has co-authored (with Linda Burnham) a report to the United Nations on U.S. government policy toward poor women and children and a number of op-eds.