Abstract: An important focus of National Crime Prevention (NCP), the Commonwealth’s crime prevention program, is to identify priorities for violence prevention in Indigenous communities, where statistics show it is occurring at higher rates than for the rest of the Australian population. The aims of the research consultancy were to: 1 identify priorities concerning the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities through a review of literature and through consultations with key stakeholders across disciplines and sectors 2 develop a strategic framework to incorporate policy recommendations designed to address the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities, and proposals on how to implement the policy recommendations 3 produce recommendations explicitly designed to inform the development of at least one demonstration project that would centre on the prevention of violence in Indigenous communities When we began this study, the term ‘domestic violence’ was felt to be unsuitable for any analysis of violence in Indigenous households and was replaced with the term ‘family violence’ for this report. ‘Family violence’ was broadly defined to encapsulate not only the extended nature of Indigenous families, but also the context of a range of violence forms, occurring frequently between kinspeople in Indigenous communities. The notion of ‘family violence’ may be summarised as follows: ❙ family violence may involve all types of relatives. The victim and the perpetrator often have a kinship relation ❙ the perpetrator of violence may be an individual or a group ❙ the victim of violence may also be an individual or a group ❙ the term ‘family’ means ‘extended family’ which also covers a kinship network of discrete, intermarried, descent groups ❙ the ‘community’ may be remote, rural or urban based; its residents may live in one location or be more dispersed, but nevertheless interact behave as a social network ❙ the acts of violence may constitute physical, psychological, emotional, social, economic and/or sexual abuse ❙ some of the acts of violence are ongoing over a long period of time, one of the most prevalent examples being spousal (or domestic) violence
Notes: Full Report