The Policy Panopticon

Jeremy Bentham, the 19th century utilitarian philosopher, developed a plan for the ultimate prison. Called the panopticon, it worked on a simple principle: the prisoner would constantly be under surveillance by his jailers. No aspect of his life would be free from scrutiny. His acts and omissions would be entirely visible to all.
The modern state puts us all in something of a panopticon- credit reporting agencies, insurers, employers and various branches of government "see" deeply into the minutia of all our lives. Visibility is an exchange: we submit because we want what these observers have to offer.
But those of us who who have marketable skills and accumulated assets are in a position to manipulate our terms of trade and gain some shelter from prying eyes. We can change insurers, we can change jobs, we can use our skills or hire advocates to help us manage our relationship with bureaucracies. We have some ability to limit our visibility.
Those at the bottom of the income ladder, however, do not have these options. Minimum wage workers, the unemployed and the disabled may require public subsidies to meet basic needs in every aspect of their lives. Their ability to purchase food, to obtain medical care, to obtain safe, affordable housing all depend on public subsidies, and these subsidy programs each regulate and review almost every aspect of an applicant's life.
An application for food stamps, for instance, requires as much information as a mortgage application: Vehicle titles and license numbers, proof of earned and unearned income, retirement accounts, proof of all property owned, proof of possible future income, employment information, birth certificates, social security numbers...the list goes on. And the food stamp recertification process typically requires this information to be produced at least twice a year, more frequently when circumstances change.
Subsidized housing programs require all this information and more. Criminal histories are required for these programs, along with landlord references from previous tenancies. The criminal histories of family members-even those who do not reside with the tenant can be a reason to deny public housing: if your Uncle Joe, who was once arrested for drug abuse, is a frequent visitor, you can be evicted. Frequently, credit checks are also used to select tenants in subsidized housing programs. And here, too, re-certification occurs at least yearly and more often if circumstances change.
The justification for this surveillance and regulation is the principle of "least eligibility," inherited from the Elizabethan poor law. The major problem in providing assistance, this logic goes, is that of separating the worthy from the unworthy poor. Intensive certification works on the principle that applicants are unworthy until they prove otherwise.
In Bentham's scheme, individuals were consigned to the panopticon because they had committed a crime. The social policy panopticon works on the same principle, but here, the crime is that of poverty.