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This article explores ways in which state crime theory, which is predominantly based on contemporary conceptions of human rights, might be applied to settler-colonial violence and the forced dispossession of the land from Indigenous peoples. The Australian state was established through the foundational violence inherent to settler colonialism and the processes of primitive accumulation that underpinned it. This created the conditions for ongoing structural violence, inflicted through a continuum of criminogenic, arguably genocidal state practices designed to disrupt – if not eliminate – the social worlds and collective identities of Indigenous peoples. These practices have been normalized through Australian nationalist ideology and its associated narratives of progress, democracy and the rule of law. Theories of state crime need to break from these normative narratives to make sense of the criminogenic nature of settler colonialism.

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The Australian-funded and operated immigration detention centre on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, serves as a frontline for Australia's border policing measures against unauthorised refugees. The willingness of the Australian state to forcibly transfer and detain refugees at sites such as Manus Island reflects its commitment to deterring unauthorised arrivals by punishing them for their methods of travel. Comparing the outcomes of the 2016 refugee global summits and recent public inquiries into the conditions on Manus Island, this article considers the disconnect between Australia's criminogenic border policing practices and its supposed commitments to a humanitarian refugee resettlement policy. It argues that the dominant view of resettlement as an outcome to be bestowed on 'worthy' refugees removes refugee agency and enables ongoing and systemic human rights abuses at sites such as Manus Island. For refugees this can only be resolved by establishing a right to free movement.

This article analyses the border policies of australia's federal Labor governments between 2007 and 2013. It argues that the policies of externalization pursued by Labor inevitably led to the restoration of the Pacific Solution introduced by the previous Liberal-National Party Coalition government and reproduced similar forms of state criminality and resistance.

Australia's punitive border policing regime, aimed at deterring asylum seekers attempting unauthorised entry into the country, was ratcheted up even further in 2013 by the former Labor-led government and its successor (as of September 2013), the Liberal National Party Coalition. In effect, under the guise of combating 'people-smuggling', and a pledge to 'Stop the Boats', policies such as the mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals and the use of off-shore detention facilities have been made even more draconian. Now the aim is to block entirely any right to resettlement or residence for refugees in Australia itself, using the weaker and poorer states of Nauru and Papua New Guinea, historically under Australia's control, to act – to their own long-standing detriment – as detention and resettlement centres, for increasing numbers of migrants.

This article examines developments in Australian border policing policy since the election of a Labor government in November 2007. It argues that despite the formal cessation of the 'Pacific Solution', there are fundamental continuities in policy that ensure systemic human rights abuses by the Australian state against unauthorised refugees. In particular, attempts by the Labor government to forge a 'regional solution' have increased the risks of travel for unauthorised refugees, exacerbated abuses within Australian and regional detention facilities and diminished the long-term prospects of resettlement for this cohort. Inevitably, this has laid the basis for a revised version of the Pacific Solution.

Abstract: The principle that detention should be a measure of last resort is an important benchmark of children's rights. However, it is unclear what obligations this principle imposes upon states and little consistency in its application. The Australian experience illustrates the enduring tensions between formal commitments to the protection of children and detention practices at a state and federal level. Recent federal government immigration detention policies and the New South Wales state government's criminal justice policies demonstrate the contradictory and potentially abusive approaches taken by various governments to the detention of young people and the limitations of children's rights.

Police misuse of strip search powers at music festivals, at train stations, in police vehicles and at other locations has been subject to sustained public attention in recent years. This article traces the evolution of strip search practices in New South Wales, explores the legal and policy context in which they have developed, highlights the individual and social harms arising from them and discusses the need for fundamental law reform. We argue that recent controversies regarding police strip searches and drug detection dog operations in New South Wales show policing to be simultaneously a law-making and a law-abusing power. By examining concepts concerned with how police construct their own working rules, police data and testimony provided to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC), we explain how police justify conducting strip searches that should otherwise be considered unlawful.

This article considers the deepening of police power in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, criminal law. It analyses the combined effects of four recent criminal law regimes that not only give the NSW Police Force more powers, but also reflect the significant role of institutional police power and the pre-emptive logic of criminal law. We examine: the introduction of serious crime prevention orders; the introduction of public safety orders; investigative detention powers in relation to terrorist acts; and confiscation, forfeiture and search powers, and trespass offences that target protests. Drawing on the work of 'police power' theorists, we argue that these new regimes illustrate the centrality of police power to the criminal law rather than a deviation from a putative, 'normal' criminal law.