ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with welfare fraud prosecution strategies and particularly the changed basis for investigating and prosecuting welfare fraud in Australia. I characterise this shift as a move from a ‘prosecution-first’ mentality to an approach underpinned by the technology of Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP). Drawing on detailed analyses of interview and documentary data, I describe and interrogate the technologies and effects of these two approaches. Where the first relies on quantitative targets, decentralisation and the pursuit of prosecution at any cost, the ILP model invokes the strategies of centralisation, economic efficiency and disruption tactics. As I argue in this chapter, this new regime has also provided scope for investigators to consider the impacts of prosecution on social security recipients and question the use of prosecution in some circumstances. This has, at times, resulted in the less punitive treatment of welfare recipients.
