Work

Sasa’a le fafao?: Approaches to Return and Reintegration of Criminal Deportees (Returnees) into Samoa

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Pacific Island states face high levels of criminal deportations arriving from the United States, Australia and New Zealand—with the expectation that returnees will simply reintegrate. However, reintegration into a country that individuals often do not remember, or know the language or cutural protocols of, can be difficult. Returnees may face social stigma and/or subsequent surveillance and legal requirements on their return: the latter known in scholarly literature as ‘crimmigration creep’. In this article, we examine the case of Samoa, which has taken a unique culture-centric approach to reintegration through the establishment of the quasi-governmental Samoa Returnees Charitable Trust, rejecting external ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches. We argue that this exertion of Samoa’s agency has led to a delay in crimmigration creep. *This is a corrected version of the original article published on September 1, 2024. The Correction Notice can be found at https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.4409

Source: International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy

DOI: 10.5204/ijcjsd.4406

Authors: Henrietta McNeill, Magele Vernon Mackenzie

Institutions: Australian National University, University of Manchester

Language: English

Topic: Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: diamond

Funder: Australian National University