Foreword: criminalizing children. Histories of welfare and the state in Australia; 1. Child welfare and the Australian state: an introduction; 2. Knowing the 'neglected' aboriginal child; 3. Neglected and criminal children; 4. Science, race and separations; 5. Unstable categories: children in welfare and justice in the early twentieth century; 6. The mission station as a correctional institution; 7. From mental defectives to the psychology of the family; 8. The discovery of the Aboriginal child; 9. Government and family.