Drawing on Loïc Wacquant’s concept of the punitive state and the cultural studies tradition associated with the Birmingham School, this chapter shows how, following political conflicts over social inequality—particularly after the impeachment of President Rolandas Paksas—a disciplinary and individualising approach to poverty took hold in Lithuania. It analyses how poverty increasingly came to be interpreted as a matter of individual morality and how public policy shifted toward punitive and corrective approaches, emphasising work obligations, responsible behaviour, and conformity to socially accepted values as conditions for support. The chapter argues that this shift established a new regime of ‘punitive responsibilisation’, in which social assistance is grounded not in solidarity but in control, moral judgement, and assumptions about the “inappropriate” lifestyles of the poor. In this framework, socially excluded individuals are constructed as ‘punishable subjects’—not only recipients of assistance but also morally suspect actors whose behaviour is continuously monitored, evaluated, and disciplined.