This article critically examines techniques employed by the Australian state to expand its control of refugees and asylum seekers living in Australia. In particular, it analyses the operation of Australia’s unique Asylum Seeker Code of Behaviour, which asylum seekers who arrive by boat must sign in order to be released from mandatory immigration detention, with reference to an original dataset of allegations made under the Code. We argue that the Code and the regime of visa cancellation and re-detention powers of which it forms a part are manifestations of what Beckett and Murakawa call the ‘shadow carceral state’, whereby punitive state power is extended beyond prison walls through the blurring of civil, administrative and criminal legal authority. The Code contributes to Australia’s apparatus of refugee deterrence by adding to it a brutal system of surveillance, visa cancellation and denial of services for asylum seekers living in the community.

This article interrogates a commonly articulated idea in relation to the criminalisation of offensive language: namely, that swearing at police challenges their authority and thereby deserves criminal punishment. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the article examines representations of swearing at police officers in offensive language cases and parliamentary debates, including constructions of power, authority and order. It contributes to—but also denaturalises—conceptions about police power and authority in the context of public order policing. The article argues that criminal justice discourse plays a significant and often under-acknowledged role in naturalising the punishment of swearing at, or in the presence of, police officers.

Successive reforms in New South Wales ('NSW') have established far-reaching powers to curtail the liberties of those who were once convicted of various serious sexual and violent offences. Now, these powers have been significantly expanded, with the Executive Government asserting the ability to control the free movement, speech, association and work of NSW citizens and businesses via Serious Crime Prevention Orders ('SCPOs') under the Crimes (Serious Crime Prevention Orders) Act 2016 (NSW). This Comment surveys substantive and procedural aspects of SCPOs. We situate the orders as part of a continuing expansion of administrative detention and supervision regimes of a hybrid, quasi-criminal nature. We question whether the powers go too far by increasing the State's powers to surveil and control a person's or business's activities under the justification of preventing crime. We also canvass the possibility that SCPOs will operate in a punitive (not merely preventative) manner.

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