This paper is the keynote address presented at the sixth Annual Colloquium of the International Centre for the Prevention of Crime held in 2006. Focusing on Indigenous communities, the author states that the breakdown of law and order in many of these communities in Australia has provided, and continues to provide, fertile ground for crime and related problems. She argues that the term ‘communities’ must encompass police and law enforcement agencies and all levels of government as well as community groups and organisations working together to address the significant challenges faced in Indigenous communities. In many remote communities law and order has either been absent or seriously lacking for some time. Community members are frequently trapped in dysfunction with entire communities paralysed by lawlessness, violence, substance abuse and chronic ill health. This perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage and hopelessness. She maintains that Indigenous communities offer many of the conditions that are conducive to crime, and could in fact be described as crime magnets’. Recent reports about the trafficking of illicit drugs in Indigenous communities highlight this fact. For communities to be able to combat, and in time, prevent crime, the underlying conditions that enable criminal activity to flourish unchecked must be addressed.