Indigenous women in Australia are up to seven times more likely to be homicide victims: report

Government response includes funding focused on legal services

An Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) report has revealed that, compared with the national average, Indigenous women are up to seven times more likely to be the victims of homicides. Current or former intimate partners killed 72% of these women.

The AIC report – titled “Homicide of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women” – shared that 476 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women were homicide victims in the period between 1 July 1989 and 30 June 2023.

Nearly all victims from police-cleared incidents, specifically 97%, were killed by people they knew, the report stated. The study’s findings support that there is an over-representation of Indigenous women as homicide victims in Australia, the report said.

This study considered 34 years of police and coronial data on Indigenous women victims of homicide (murder and manslaughter) from the National Homicide Monitoring Program, with the intent of providing a baseline for measuring targets to reduce violent victimisation among such women.

The AIC report addressed findings from the final report of the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women, which was released in August.

The AIC, a national research and knowledge centre, conducts and communicates evidence-based research that is used to support policy and practice with the objective of promoting justice and reducing crime.

Attorney-general’s response

“These statistics represent the terrible and tragic loss of mothers, sisters, daughters and other deeply loved relatives,” said a media release from Mark Dreyfus, Australia’s attorney-general. “It is not acceptable for losses of this scale to continue.”

Dreyfus stressed that the government has been prioritising addressing the issue of violence against women and children, including through investing more than $3.4bn in initiatives supporting the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–32.

The government will use the data in the AIC report to track the progress of achieving this plan’s goal of at least halving all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children by 2031, Dreyfus said.

Dreyfus added that, last month, the government committed $4.4bn in new funding to tackle gender-based violence, to provide support for legal services, and to respond to the Rapid Review into Prevention Approaches.

This response entails investing in frontline services and initiatives to prevent violence, including $800m in new funding over five years to the legal assistance sector, with a focus on legal services addressing gender-based violence and services specific to First Nations, Dreyfus said.

Dreyfus noted that the government is also considering developing a standalone First Nations National Plan for Family Safety, as recommended by the Senate inquiry.

Source: thelawyermag.com

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