Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray.  _The Bell Curve:
Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life_, Free
Press, New York, 1994.

     THE COMING OF THE CUSTODIAL STATE

     When a society reaches a certain overall level of
     affluence, the haves begin to feel sympathy toward, if
     not guilt about, the condition of the have-nots.  Thus
     dawns the welfare state -- the attempt to raise the
     poor and the needy out of their plight.  In what
     direction does the social welfare system evolve when a
     coalition of the cognitive elite and the affluent
     continues to accept the main tenets of the welfare
     state but are increasingly frightened of and hostile
     toward the recipients o help?  When the coalition is
     prepared to spend money but has lost faith that
     remedial social programs work?  The most likely
     consequence in our view is that the cognitive elite,
     with its commanding position, will implement an
     expanded welfare state for the underclass that also
     keeps it out from underfoot.  Our label for this
     outcome is the custodial state.  Should it come to
     pass, here is a scenario:

     Over the next decades, it will become broadly accepted
     by the cognitive elite that the people we now refer to
     as the underclass are in that condition through no
     fault of their own but because of inherent short-
     comings about which little can be done.  Politicians
     and  intellectuals alike will become much more open
     about the role of dysfunctional behavior in the
     underclass, accepting that addiction, violence,
     unavailability for work, child abuse, and family
     disorganization will keep most members of the
     underclass from fending for themselves.  It will be
     agreed that the underclass cannot be trusted to use
     cash wisely.  Therefore policy will consist of grater
     benefits, but these will be primarily in the  form of
     services rather than cash.  Furthermore, there will be
     new restrictions.  Specifically, these consequences are
     plausible:

     ...

     *The homeless will vanish*.  One of the safer
     predictions is that sometime in the near future, the
     cognitive elite will join the broad public sentiment in
     favor of reasserting control over public spaces.  It
     will become easier to consign mentally incompetent
     adults to custodial care.  Perhaps the clinically
     borderline cases that now constitute a high proportion
     of the homeless will be required to reside in shelters,
     more elaborately equipped and staffed than most
     homeless shelters are today.  Police will be returned
     their authority to roust people and enforce laws
     prohibiting disorderly conduct.

     ...

     *Social budgets and measures for social control will
     become still more centralized*.  ...  The mounting
     costs will also generate intense political pressure on
     Washington to *do* something.  Unable to bring itself
     to do away with the welfare edifice -- for by that time
     it will be assumed that social chaos will follow any
     radical cutback -- the government will continue to try
     to engineer behavior through new programs and
     regulations.  As time goes on and hostility toward the
     welfare-dependent increases, those policies are likely
     to become authoritarian and rely increasingly on
     custodial care.

     ...

     In short, by *custodial state*, we have in mind a high-
     tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation
     for some substantial minority of the nations'
     population, while the rest of America tries to go about
     its business.  In its less benign forms, the solutions
     will become more and more totalitarian.  Benign or
     otherwise, "going about its business" in the old sense
     will not be possible.  It is difficult to imagine the
     United States preserving its heritage of individualism,
     equal rights before the law, free people running their
     own lives, once it is accepted that a significant part
     of the population must be made permanent wards of the
     state.  pp 523 -526