The Magistrates Early Referral into Treatment (MERIT) program is a New South Wales court-based scheme targeting adult defendants appearing before a participating Local Court who have a demonstrable illicit drug […]

Tom Calma presents his speech at the AIJA Family Violence Conference in Brisbane. Family violence is defined in context to kinship in Indigenous communities. The complexities of Indigenous family structure […]

This report provides an investigation of early intervention and diversionary practices aimed at preventing offending behaviour in Indigenous young people with a cognitive disability and/or a mental health problem. Specifically, […]

Issues of Indigenous disadvantage and dysfunction are before our eyes more frequently and more prominently than ever before. Barely a day goes by without another chilling and heartbreaking story of […]

The Mount Theo-Yuendumu Substance Misuse Aboriginal Corporation and associated diversionary programs are the Yuendumu community’s current best strategy for dealing with substance misuse among its young people. This article describes […]

This paper provides a brief overview of current policies, strategies and projects relating to crime prevention among Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, the United States and New Zealand. The report […]

This report provides background notes for two workshops associated with the 2009 Community safety and indigenous peoples conference in Ottawa. Topics for the first workshop, on the main trends and […]

The South Australia Police Operation Mandrake highlighted the very significant issue of serious repeat offending by a small number of young people. This report considers serious youth repeat offending in […]

The unique experience of family violence for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people calls for culturally aware and community-led healing programs. This research report distils ‘what works’ to support and […]

It seems clear that child sexual assault is chronically under reported in Indigenous communities and that prosecution levels are low. This article examines the prevalence of child sexual assault in […]

This evaluation of the New South Wales Police Service’s Aboriginal Strategic Plan considers a number of key indicators and output data. The first section of the report evaluates and assesses […]

This resource proposes a whole of government strategy to drive solutions to Australia’s high Aboriginal imprisonment rates and high levels of experienced violence. It proposes principles and policy responses in […]

For many societies, the consumption of alcohol and its related outcomes are deeply embedded in cultural, economic, legal and health systems. Yet alcohol is not an ‘ordinary commodity’. It is […]

The review was established to assess the appropriateness of the legislation, practices and procedures that apply in cases where family violence is an issue and, in particular, to consider whether […]

This paper considers the Aboriginal Care Circle Pilot Program (Care Circle pilot) in Nowra as a ‘culturally appropriate’ step within the court process for deciding Aboriginal child protection care matters. […]

Our legal system was largely inherited from Britain, so it is, therefore based in European-Western cultural and legal traditions. Alongside this, and over many thousands of years, Australian Indigenous communities […]

A research team recently completed an exercise to estimate relative rates of Indigenous Family Violence (IFV). The research was conducted on a national scale and utilised only quantitative information. This […]

Indigenous customary law should not be viewed simply in terms of traditional tribal punishments but should be seen principally as the application of cultural values and principles to Indigenous community […]

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are vastly over-represented in the Australian juvenile and criminal justice systems, with a high cost through exposure to the harsh prison environment, marginalisation, and […]

The health of Australia’s prisoners 2009 is the culmination of several years’ development of national indicators in relation to prisoner health in Australia. This first national report shows that prisoners […]

This article reports on the trend in western New South Wales that sees young Indigenous people accused of an offence being granted bail on the condition that they relocate to […]

The main players involved in the administration of criminal justice in respect of Indigenous people of a non-English speaking background effectively combine to prop up a dysfunctional system where unrecognised […]

This report was compiled in response to concerns raised by Indigenous people about the prevalence of child sexual abuse in Australia. The report is a preliminary attempt to document the […]

The publicity given recently to allegations of sexual assault of women in Indigenous communities in Australia has highlighted the urgent need for culturally appropriate services for the survivors. The author […]

In June 2007 the Federal Government announced a range of ’emergency measures’ to combat sexual abuse against indigenous children in the Northern Territory. Indigenous community members experiencing violence know however, […]

The objective of this study was to identify individual and household factors associated with violence among Australian Indigenous women and dependent children. Univariate and multivariate analysis of data from the […]

In 2008 the Victorian Government launched a ten year plan to address Indigenous family violence. This paper critically reflects on the status of this plan two year after its launch. […]

Often service providers find Indigenous victims of violence with disabilities as a group ‘too hard to handle’. In Victoria, assistance to that group is likely to be unavailable or inappropriate […]

Australia’s rising imprisonment rates and the use of prisons as a social policy tool are examined. Factors for this rise could be: increasing criminal justice budgets; competition between political parties […]

This comment sets out the specific areas of conflict between mandatory sentencing and key human rights standards and provides a summary of criticism of mandatory sentencing by key United Nations […]

This report addresses the issue of whether the legal system is responding adequately to domestic and family violence against Indigenous people. The aims of the research were to: determine what […]

This report provides an overview of the impact of different kinds of crime prevention programs on Aboriginal communities throughout Australia. The report discusses crime levels in Indigenous communities; major crime […]

It is argued that there are many points of critique to current federal policies in relation to Indigenous people in Australia. In this opinion piece, the author focuses on one […]

The article revisits Indigenous imprisonment and punishment through The Australian Prisons Project(APP). The APP was established in 2008 as a result of an Australian Research Council grant, where a major […]

When the ‘Bringing them home’ report was released in 1997, the focus was very much on the issue of the moral and legal responsibilities for past government policies of forced […]

While there have been some progressive changes in Australian juvenile justice in recent years including developments in youth justice conferencing, more consistent and widely available diversionary options, and a longer […]

This paper looks at issues of crime and violence in Indigenous communities in the context of broader problems of criminal justice law, policy and practice. In particular it addresses four […]

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Justice Agreement was developed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Board (ATSIAB) and the Queensland Government. It was signed by the Premier, […]

The New South Wales Legal Aid Commission’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Mediation Program (ATSIFAM) was a pilot family dispute resolution service designed to meet the needs of Indigenous […]

The Aboriginal Over-Representation Strategic Plan (AORSP) was released in September 2001. The aim of the AORSP is to decrease the number of Aboriginal young people under the supervision of the […]

Wadeye is one of the largest Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. Over the past decade, the community has attracted much negative media attention because of the amount of violence […]