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The paper addresses the relationships between administrative and penal treatment of il/legal immigrants by police forces in Italy. It draws upon interviews with high-level police officers and attorneys-general from a research project carried out in 1999 in Emilia-Romagna. The main argument focuses on how police use the category of 'illegal/criminal immigrant' as a categorisation device both for administrative purposes, in order to check the formal requirements of immigrants asking for a residence permit--and for crime prevention and repression. The latter case is particularly crucial whenever police have to cope with deviant behaviours, like prostitution, which are not formally criminal, but which are socially perceived as such and which generate social alarm. The intentional use of a blurred distinction between an administrative sphere and a criminal one by police raises interesting questions concerning both new practices of neighbourhood control and the social construction of a useful political scapegoat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]