Policing Welfare Fraud

‘In the aftermath of Australia’s internationally infamous Robodebt scandal, Policing Welfare Fraud is a must read for understanding the decades’ long blending of the welfare and penal states in Australia. Through incisive empirical analysis, Wilcock demonstrates how welfare is governed through fraud, even though most debts are not fraudulent. She contests grand narratives of the criminalisation of poverty, showing that welfare compliance regimes are more messy, contradictory and complicated, thus highlighting how contemporary welfare can be otherwise enacted.’

Professor Paul Henman, Professor for Digital Sociology & Social Policy, University of Queensland

‘An incisive and sophisticated examination of how Australia’s welfare compliance regime emerged from a program of neo-liberal welfare ‘reform’ which seeks to stigmatise ‘welfare dependency’, ‘govern through fraud’, assemble punitive compliance regimes and criminalise welfare recipients. Compelling reading.’

Emeritus Professor David Brown, Faculty of Law and Justice, University of New South Wales

Scarlet Wilcock is Lecturer at Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia, and an Associate Investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society.