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From The Desk - Sky High Violence in the Northern Territory · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Appoche Production. Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I'm
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: your host, Adam Shand. This is my from the Desk
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Friday feature. There's been a lot of discussion about crime
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: in Australia lately. Here in Victoria, we're hearing about home invasions,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: stolen cars, youth offending and whether people feel safe anymore.
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  Speaker 1: The same conversation is happening in Sydney, but today I
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  Speaker 1: want to go somewhere else, because if you want to
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  Speaker 1: understand serious violence in Australia, one jurisdiction stands apart from
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  Speaker 1: all of them.
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  Speaker 2: The Northern Territory.
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  Speaker 1: Chaos on the streets of Catherine trigger calls for a curfew.
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  Speaker 2: We are struggling with resourcing.
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  Speaker 1: We have been struggling with resourcing in our remote station
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  Speaker 1: for quite some time. The spikes that we've seen recently
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  Speaker 1: is a regular occurrence. We normally have ongoing family feuding occurring.
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  Speaker 1: According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, in twenty four
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  Speaker 1: twenty five, the NT recorded a murder race of four
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  Speaker 1: point nine six per one hundred thousand people. The Australian
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  Speaker 1: rate was just zero point nine six. For contrast, Victoria
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  Speaker 1: was one point one point seven, New South Wales zero
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  Speaker 1: point ninety seven, Queensland zero point six to two. In
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  Speaker 1: other words, the nc's murder rate was more than five
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  Speaker 1: times the Australian rate. The church has got a small population,
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  Speaker 1: so relatively small numbers can produce large movements in the rate.
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  Speaker 1: There were thirteen homicides during that year, but even allowing
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  Speaker 1: for that, the difference is extraordinary and murder is only
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  Speaker 1: part of the story. In May twenty twenty six, Northern
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  Speaker 1: Territory Police recorded one hundred and sixty assault in Alice Springs.
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  Speaker 1: That's more than five every day.
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  Speaker 2: Of those, one.
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  Speaker 1: Hundred and eight were domestic violence related and ninety three
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  Speaker 1: were alcohol related. Those categories overlap, but they tell us
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  Speaker 1: something important about the nature of the violence. This isn't
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  Speaker 1: just Analys Springs problem. In the same month, Catherine recorded
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  Speaker 1: seventy eight assaults, ten and Creek twenty six, Palmerston ninety one,
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  Speaker 1: and Darwin had two hundred and twenty nine. Across the
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  Speaker 1: Northern Territory police recorded eight hundred and forty.
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  Speaker 2: Assaults in one month.
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  Speaker 1: Catherine is particularly interesting because its population is much smaller
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  Speaker 1: than Alice Springs, so.
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps we've been asking the wrong question.
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  Speaker 1: Instead of asking what's wrong with Alice Springs, we could
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  Speaker 1: be asking why is serious violence occurring at such extraordinary
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  Speaker 1: levels across parts of the Northern Territory Because there's another
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  Speaker 1: side to these stats. When we see news reports from
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  Speaker 1: Alice Springs, we tend to see street crime, stolen cars,
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  Speaker 1: break ins, young offenders, and violence in public places, but
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  Speaker 1: much of the violence is occurring inside people's homes.
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  Speaker 3: In the last three years, the NT government has cut
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  Speaker 3: significant funding from youth services in Alice Springs, the result
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  Speaker 3: and ever increasing number of local kids with nothing to do.
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  Speaker 1: The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded eleven six hundred and
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  Speaker 1: ninety four assault victims in the Northern Turkey during twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty four. That's four four hundred and eighty three victims
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  Speaker 1: per one hundred thousand people, and sixty four percent of
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  Speaker 1: those assaults were.
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  Speaker 2: Family and DV related.
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  Speaker 1: So this isn't just a story about strangers attacking strangers.
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  Speaker 1: A huge amount of the violence is occurring between people
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  Speaker 1: who know one another, inside relationships, inside families, and that
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  Speaker 1: brings us to one of the most difficult aspects of
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  Speaker 1: this story. Aboriginal people are dramatically overrepresented in Australia's criminal
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  Speaker 1: justice system.
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  Speaker 2: But that's just half the story.
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  Speaker 1: First Nations Australians are also disproportionately victims of the violence.
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  Speaker 3: Indigenous youth are more at risk than non Indigenous youth
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  Speaker 3: in this region, for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Research found that First Nations Australians were killed at around
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  Speaker 1: six times the national murder rate, with around two thirds
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  Speaker 1: of those homicides occurring within family or intimate relationships. The
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  Speaker 1: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that seventy two
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  Speaker 1: percent of hospitalizations of First Nations people for assault were
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  Speaker 1: due to family violence. So don't reduce this to a
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  Speaker 1: story about Indigenous offending. It's also about Indigenous victimization, about women,
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  Speaker 1: about children, and about families living with extraordinary levels of violence.
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  Speaker 1: There's also something we don't know. The available monthly figures
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  Speaker 1: for our springs don't tell us what proportion of those
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  Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty assaults involved Indigenous victims or offenders,
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  Speaker 1: So I'm not going to pretend that they do. This
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  Speaker 1: is serious enough without inventing stats. There's a personal reason
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  Speaker 1: this story interests me. I've lived in the Northern Territory
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and nineteen eighty one, I worked in the
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  Speaker 1: mines at nullam Boy on the Gove Peninsula in northeast
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  Speaker 1: Arnham Land. I was eighteen, straight from school, and I
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  Speaker 1: recall violence. I recall alcohol, and I saw fights and
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  Speaker 1: alcohol fueled behavior. But my memory, more than forty years
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  Speaker 1: ago is nothing like the picture we're seeing in some
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  Speaker 1: parts of the territory today. Now memory isn't datam it's
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  Speaker 1: just anecdotes. So I went looking for the stats, and
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  Speaker 1: what I found complicated my own memories.
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  Speaker 2: We don't have a clean.
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  Speaker 1: Nationally comparable Northern Territory homicide series going all the way
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  Speaker 1: back to nineteen eighty, but the historical evidence we do
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  Speaker 1: have tells us something important. The territory has recorded very
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  Speaker 1: high murder rates for decades. Even in two thousand, when
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  Speaker 1: we saw the lowest murder victimization rates since nineteen eighty nine,
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  Speaker 1: the rate was still three point zero six per one
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  Speaker 1: hundred thousand people. So the question isn't what happened to
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  Speaker 1: the Northern Territory, it's why has this problem persisted for
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  Speaker 1: so long? More than four decades have passed since I
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  Speaker 1: worked in nullen Boy. Governments have changed, alcohol policies have changed.
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  Speaker 1: We've seen inquiries, interventions, policing strategies, and enormous amounts of
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  Speaker 1: public expenditure. Yet here we are in twenty twenty six
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  Speaker 1: with a murder rate more than five times the national rate.
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  Speaker 1: There isn't one explanation. Alcohol clearly matters. Remember ninety three
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  Speaker 1: of those one hundred and sixty dollars springs assaults in
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  Speaker 1: May were grog related. But research also points to disadvantage,
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  Speaker 1: poor health, housing, drugs, intergenerational trauma, education, employment, and the
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  Speaker 1: consequences of failed past government policies. None of those things
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  Speaker 1: excuses violence. Offenders remain responsible for what they do. But
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  Speaker 1: if we actually want fewer victims, surely we must understand
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  Speaker 1: what is producing the violence.
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  Speaker 2: So what works? What do we do?
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  Speaker 1: More police, more prisons, alcohol restrictions, curfews, early intervention with children,
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  Speaker 1: domestic violence programs, drug and alcohol treatment, better housing, education,
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  Speaker 1: and employment. It's probably a combination of all those things.
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  Speaker 1: But I think every policy must face one very simple test.
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  Speaker 1: Doesn't produce fewer victims because behind all these stats are
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  Speaker 1: real people. Every assault leaves a victim, every murder shatters
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  Speaker 1: a family and leaves a victim dead, and every DV.
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  Speaker 1: Violence can leave children witnessing things they'll carry for.
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  Speaker 2: The rest of their lives.
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  Speaker 1: When I was living in the NT more than forty
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  Speaker 1: years ago, I did see violence, and I saw.
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  Speaker 2: The role alcohol was playing in that.
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  Speaker 1: My memory tells me it wasn't like this, but the
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  Speaker 1: historical evidence tells me the story is much more complicated.
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  Speaker 1: This isn't simply about a sudden crime wave. It's about
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  Speaker 1: why extraordinarily high levels of violence have persisted in parts
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  Speaker 1: of the NT for generations and after decades of inquiries,
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  Speaker 1: interventions and political promises. It's time we stopped asking what
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  Speaker 1: sounds toughest and started asking what has actually been proven
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  Speaker 1: to reduce the violence. If something works, we have to
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  Speaker 1: do more of it. If it doesn't have the courage
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  Speaker 1: to try something else, because there's only one measure that
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  Speaker 1: really matters, and that's fewer victims, greater safety for families
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  Speaker 1: and children. This has been Adam shanned for Real Crime
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: from the desk. If you want to follow me, please
• 8:18
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• 8:20
  Speaker 1: please call crime Stoppers one one hundred, triple three, triple zero.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Thanks for listening to this episode and
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