This article considers the trajectory of children from state care to imprisonment in relation to 105 New Zealanders who spent time in residential care between the 1950s and 1990s. Following previous research, the article demonstrates how children in state care are far more likely to progress into prisons as a result of maltreatment, multiple care placements, damaging residential cultures, social disadvantages and psychological harms, as well as differential treatment in the criminal justice system. This New Zealand research also shows how the interconnected and long-standing processes of victimization and criminalization increase the likelihood of a child transitioning from care to custody.

Book reviewed by Lesley Pitt.

Media and political representations of asylum seekers and refugees have been infused with language denoting images of ‘danger’, ‘criminality’ and ‘risk’. Despite attempts to provide for those seeking asylum in the UK, those in need have frequently been stigmatized and criminalized. Policies and practices, intended to respond to those fleeing economic hardship or political persecution, have been guided by such depictions. This article illustrates the use of detention as a mechanism for purportedly securing the containment and removal of ‘illegals’. While the use of detention may be seen as an attempt to deter ‘undeserving’ asylum seekers from seeking sanctuary in the UK, this article argues that this practice is, in effect, a fundamentally punitive method to assuage public fears concerning supposed ‘risk’ and potential dangers to ‘security’.

The significant concept of 'crimmigration' has evolved to explain how criminal and immigration laws have begun to merge, expanding state powers to surveil, control and punish. States use crimmigration processes to reinforce cultural, political and moral boundaries. In doing so, states frequently displace principles of punishment or rights in favour of promoting compliance, security or belonging. In relation to the case of New Zealanders detaineddeported from Australia, this article illustrates new forms of crimmigration. First, crimmigration is expanding in a context of neoliberal responsibilization. Given the gradual removal of economic supports or political inclusion, 'non-citizens' share a deeply precarious space, and more groups are being made 'at risk' of crimmigration interventions. Once likely to focus upon certain populations, especially on 'race' or nationality grounds, crimmigration now engages all 'non-citizens'. Second, crimmigration has expanded to include pre-emption-'non-citizens' are targeted not just on account of their criminal behaviours but also their perceived associations, 'risky' behaviours or suspicious associations. Finally, and third, crimmigration strategies have expanded across borders, in ways that fundamentally distort established legal principles on the ever-shifting grounds of security. The contagion of crimmigration creates multiple punishments for 'non-citizens' that far surpass the nature of their offending or their 'risk' to society.