He will use a keynote speech to sound the alarm about jobless “ghettos” around Britain like that depicted in the Channel 4 documentary series Benefits Street.
And he will warn that, in the worst cases, welfare dependency is breeding a new generation of criminals.
Mr Duncan Smith will tell an audience in London: “Our welfare system has become distorted, no longer the safety net it was intended to be.
“Too often it is an entrapment – as it has been for a million people left on incapacity benefits for a decade or more, or the more than four million abandoned on out-of-work benefits even before the recession.
“At its very worst, the present system makes criminals out of those trapped in its clutches. Too many end up in the shadow economy or working cash in hand.”
Mr Duncan Smith’s latest onslaught on the failed welfare system left by the last Labour government will come in a speech to mark the 10th anniversary of the Centre for Social Justice, the think-tank he founded to investigate the causes of poverty and worklessness in Britain.
Although he will not name the TV show in his speech, Mr Duncan Smith will explicitly refer to the outright shock that many people feel when “confronted with the reality” of benefit dependency.
And he will say: “We would have wanted to reform the welfare state, even if we had no deficit. As Conservatives, we should hate the idea of people with unfulfilled potential languishing on welfare.”
He will accuse the last Labour government of allowing the level of “income equality” to become “the worst for a generation.”
Tory MP Mary Macleod said: “Labour have opposed every difficult decision we’ve taken to cap welfare. It’s the same old Labour.”