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Abstract:
The issue of safety in Indigenous communities has been the subject of much public debate over recent years, with the announcement of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) in 2007 leading to greater awareness of the problems faced by some communities. The NTER was, in part, triggered by the report of the Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse. Although the NTER has been, and remains, highly controversial, it led to the implementation of a wide range of services and programs that were intended to make communities safer. The aim of these programs is to reduce rates of violence, substance abuse, child abuse and neglect and, more broadly, to promote communities in which people feel safer and in which violence will not be tolerated. Concern about these issues is not, however, limited to the Northern Territory. A large body of work has now accumulated that collectively points to disproportionately high levels of violence within some Indigenous communities, described by some as ‘all pervasive’ and by others as at ‘epidemic levels’. Indigenous people are, for example, thought to be 15 to 20 times more likely than non-Indigenous people to be charged with violent offences. In 2008–09, the hospitalisation rates for injuries caused by assault were 7 times higher for Indigenous men and 31 times for Indigenous women than for other Australian men and women. In remote areas, Indigenous people were hospitalised as a result of family violence at 35.6 times the rate of other people. Violence is, however, by no means the only threat to community safety. In Queensland, for example, the rate of substantiated child protection notifications for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children is 24.7 per 1,000 compared with a figure of only 4.1 per 1,000 for non-Indigenous children. Over one-quarter of respondents to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey considered excess alcohol consumption to be the most serious concern for communities, with approximately 1 in 10 respondents to the 2002 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey who reported consuming alcohol in the previous 12 months considering their alcohol consumption to be ‘risky’, and 1 in 20 falling into the high-risk category. Aboriginal respondents were almost twice as likely (27%) as non-Aboriginal respondents (15%) to report recent drug use. Finally, mental health problems do appear widespread in Indigenous communities. Although relatively little data on social and emotional wellbeing have been published (particularly for Indigenous people who live in urban areas), around one-third of adults report ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of psychological distress in national surveys. These rates appear to be particularly high among those with a disability or long-term health condition, those who have been victims of violence or have experienced discrimination, or those who are in prison. In this context it is unsurprising that improving community safety has been identified as one of the seven building blocks of the Australian Government’s initiative to ‘Close the Gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
