[Pinoy Criminology] MAIFIP and AICS: The dangers of doleouts and the manufacture of dependency

Despite the public outrage over flood control corruption — the billions washed away along with homes, lives, and livelihoods — the political class has learned nothing. Or, rather, it has learned exactly the wrong lesson.

As the country seethes, the bicameral committee of congressmen and senators forges ahead with the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS) and the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP). These are being sold as compassion programs. In reality, they are pork barrels in new clothing, doleouts repackaged for electoral consumption, instruments for politicians to ingratiate themselves with voters while appearing benevolent.

On paper, AICS and MAIFIP look defensible, even admirable. They are framed as poverty-alleviation tools, temporary relief for people battered by crisis — calamities like floods and earthquakes, or medical emergencies that can wipe out a family’s meager savings overnight.

Sociologist Robert Merton’s strain theory provides the academic rationale. When individuals are placed under severe strain, when legitimate means to survive are blocked, they resort to coping mechanisms that may violate the law. Crime, in this view, is not born of moral failure but of desperation. Programs like AICS and MAIFIP, at least in theory, reduce that strain. They buy time. They keep people afloat until they can stand on their own again.

This logic underpins the social safety nets of mature democracies: universal health care, unemployment benefits, food assistance, housing support. These are not acts of charity but investments in social stability. They recognize that when people are supported in moments of crisis, society as a whole becomes safer, healthier, and more productive.

But theory collapses when implementation is rotten.

For such assistance to work, there must be a real bureaucracy behind it — competent, professional, insulated from politics. There must be clear and measurable criteria for eligibility. There must be trained personnel conducting assessments based on need, not loyalty. There must be supervision and monitoring to ensure the assistance is used for its intended purpose. And, crucially, there must be evaluation: Did the assistance actually help the beneficiary recover, find work, secure housing, or stabilize their health?

This requires technical expertise, institutional discipline, and, yes, money — not just for beneficiaries but for the people who administer the program properly. It is slow, unglamorous work. It does not lend itself to ribbon-cutting or photo ops.

Strip away these safeguards, and assistance degenerates into a doleout.

That is exactly what happens in the Philippine context. Programs are administered by politically appointed personnel, easily bent by patronage and pressure. Beneficiaries are selected not because they are most in need but because they are politically useful. Even the truly needy are forced to navigate a maze of endorsements and signatures, begging favors from people who hold the keys to public funds. Need alone is never enough; you must also have connections.

In my interviews with beneficiaries of these doleout programs, the reality is even more disturbing. Some pawn their benefits to usurers. They ask for cash advances; the usurer takes their card. When the assistance is finally released, the usurer withdraws the money and gives the beneficiary only half. Fifty percent disappears into predation. The money intended for medicine or crisis relief becomes profit for loan sharks. This is not social protection; it is organized exploitation.

And because the money is treated as balato — something handed out, not earned — it is often spent accordingly. Alcohol. Cigarettes. Drugs. Gambling: tongits, pusoy, mahjong. The logic is simple and corrosive: the government is corrupt anyway, so why treat its money as sacred? Doleouts are seen not as public funds but as spoils to be consumed.

This is where the damage deepens. AICS, MAIFIP, and similar programs, when stripped of merit-based implementation and drowned in patronage, produce short-term political gain but long-term social decay. They foster a culture of dependency and mendicancy. They normalize the idea that survival depends not on work or rights, but on access to patrons.

Social learning theory in criminology picks up where Merton’s strain theory ends. When people repeatedly experience relief not through institutions but through political favors, they learn a dangerous lesson: corruption pays. Diskarte becomes virtue. Access matters more than effort. You do not need to work; you need proximity to those who control the troughs of government. Votes become currency, sold not out of ignorance but out of rational calculation. Why demand reform when you can demand ayuda?

This is the same logic that fuels political dynasties, pork barrel scams, and flood control rackets. It is all one ecosystem. The same Congress that bleeds infrastructure projects dry now insists on its right to dispense mercy by hand. The same senators who rail against corruption cling to programs that institutionalize it at the grassroots.

There is only one reason the House of Representatives and the Senate are hell-bent on pushing AICS and MAIFIP in their current form: name recall. Visibility. Electoral insurance. These programs put politicians’ names directly into the pockets of voters. They are campaign posters that come with cash.

If President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is serious about his anti-corruption rhetoric, this is the moment to prove it. This is when his old line should ring out again: Mahiya naman kayo. He should veto MAIFIP and AICS as they are currently designed. There is nothing redeeming in programs that masquerade as compassion while breeding corruption.

Assistance is not the problem. Politicized assistance is. These funds should be redirected toward social services directly managed by institutions with clear mandates, professional staff, and evidence-based criteria. Help must be delivered without political fingerprints. We must address the real strains faced by Filipinos — poverty, illness, disaster — but we must do so in a way that restores dignity, not dependence.

Anything less is not aid. It is corruption, handed out in small bills. – Rappler.com

Raymund E. Narag, PhD, is an associate professor in criminology and criminal justice at the School of Justice and Public Safety, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.