The UK government’s Troubled Families Programme was established in the months following the 2011 riots in England with the stated goal of “turning around the lives of England’s most “troubled families by getting their children back in to school, reducing criminal behavior, and getting adults back into work. As much a work of activism as sociology, Troublemakers turns a critical eye on the role played by the state in constructing, developing, and making use of the very concept of troubled families—and other social problems—in a period of austerity and welfare reform.