Illustration: courtesy Jenny Phillips

Research team:

Associate Professor Paul Memmott, Rachael Stacy, Catherine Chambers, Dr Catherine Keys (Aboriginal Environments Research Centre in the School of Geography, Planning and Architecture)

Funding:

Crime Prevention Branch of the Attorney-General's Department ($30,000)

Email/Web link:

p.memmot@mailbox.uq.edu.au rstacy@powerup.com.au cathyc@mbox.com.au keysc@housing.qld.gov.au www.aboriginalenvironments.com www.ncp.gov.au (full report) www.padv.dpmc.gov.au (Partnerships Against Domestic Violence)

Faculty of Engineering, Physical Sciences & Architecture

The first comprehensive report on violence in Australian Indigenous communities was recently released by former Federal Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone.

UQ researchers at the Aboriginal Environments Research Centre have prepared the first comprehensive report on violence in Indigenous communities throughout Australia.

The report, entitled Violence in Indigenous Communities, was recently released by former Federal Justice Minister Amanda Vanstone. It involved four components: the detailed examination of literature, the classification of violence forms, the profiling of violence prevention programs and the formulation of community-based strategies for prevention.

The research team made contact with more than 130 violence-prevention program-providers and stakeholders, from individuals and government departments, to Indigenous community groups.

Researchers reviewed available literature for the report to affirm that not only were the incident rates of violence higher in Indigenous communities when compared to those of the wider Australian population, but that these rates were increasing and the nature of the violence committed was worsening.

UQ's Aboriginal Environments Research Centre (AERC) Director, Associate Professor Paul Memmott, said the reporting process had revealed an abundance of research into the topic but a scarcity of programs in key areas of violence.

Dr Memmott was the principal researcher on the report assisted by co-authors Rachael Stacy, Catherine Chambers and Dr Catherine Keys of the same centre.

He said the report argued for a more strategic approach in the application of government resources to the problem of violence in Indigenous communities, one recognising the particular conditions in which it has emerged historically and which encourages its escalation.

"On the ground, it was important to assist in the mobilisation of community skills, knowledge and commitment, and to promote program models which would address the underlying factors contributing to why violence was perpetrated and why it could be so severe", Dr Memmott said.

"Another key aspect of government involvement would be through facilitating the formation of partnerships between Indigenous program personnel and mainstream services such as the police, judiciary, prisons, ambulance and hospitals."

Twelve main forms of violence in Indigenous communities were identified by the report, including spousal assault, homicide, rape and sexual assault, child violence, one-on-one adult altercations, suicide, economic abuse and dysfunctional community syndrome.

"The report confirmed that alcohol was a contributing factor in all types of violent incidents and that some cases of spousal assault continued for years only ending with the death of the victim," Dr Memmott said.

"Indigenous women died from domestic violence at a rate 10 times that of non-Indigenous women.

"Unlike with Aboriginal suicide and deaths in custody, there have been few studies on the underlying issues which contribute to the mental state and socialisation of the male offenders of spouse violence."

Similarly, Dr Memmott said homicide was of great concern, citing Australian Institute of Criminology figures for homicide for 1998 showing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people comprised at least 13 percent of all homicide victims and 17 percent of all offenders, although they represented only 1.5 percent of the population as a whole. A study of spousal violence and homicide exemplifies what the report attempted to elucidate in terms of the causal factors behind all types of violence that they are complex and overlapping, according to Dr Memmott.

In its investigation into violence-prevention programs, the report identified certain important deficiencies. Having categorised the types of programs, it cited among other things the research team's limited capacity within the project scope to elicit information from providers as an impediment to more detailed analysis.

"Conclusions drawn from the survey findings were that more funding needed to be allocated to developing clear implementation strategies and to ensuring ongoing program evaluation, and that this funding had to be secured for a reasonable length of time," Dr Memmott said.

"The Federal Government has shown itself to be strongly committed to reducing the levels of violence in Indigenous communities, and has allocated the first round of funding in a grants program targeting family violence called Partnerships Against Domestic Violence."

On this site

Go to top