Australian Human Rights Commission Australia and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Shadow report to the CERD Committee – 8 July 2010 51. The Commission’s report on Ending Family violence and Abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities also highlights the need to support Indigenous community initiatives and networks, human rights education, government action, and robust accountability and monitoring. 42 52. During 2007 and 2008, the Commission designed and delivered a training program to prepare Community Legal Education workers for employment in Family Violence Prevention Legal Services. The training program focused on community development approaches to family violence prevention. Programs of this nature are an important means of strengthening the capacity of Indigenous workers to expand the education and understanding among Indigenous communities of the legal contexts of family violence. The Government has ceased funding the delivery of this training program. 53. Policies and programs aimed at preventing violence against Indigenous women and children must be designed and developed with the input of Indigenous women and children. Indigenous men also have a role in this process and should be engaged in addressing the causes of violence as well as the solutions. Prevention activity in the form of community development and education is critical to break the cycle of intergenerational violence that afflicts so many Indigenous communities. Recommendation 19: That the Australian Government continue to fund community education and community development programs aimed at preventing family violence in Indigenous communities. 6.10 Indigenous peoples and the criminal justice system 54. High levels of Indigenous imprisonment have continued to occur since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. 43 Since 1996 there has been a 48 percent increase in Indigenous imprisonment. 44 55. Nationally, Indigenous adults are 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people and Indigenous juveniles are 28 times more likely to be placed in juvenile detention than their non-Indigenous counterparts. 45 56. To address over-representation, the Social Justice Commissioner has advocated that governments adopt a criminal justice policy approach based on ‘justice reinvestment’. Under this approach, money that would have been spent on imprisonment is reinvested in programs and services that address the underlying causes of crime in communities where there is a high concentration of offenders. Justice reinvestment still retains prison as a measure for dangerous and serious offenders but actively shifts the culture away from imprisonment and starts providing community services that prevent offending. 57. Results to date from overseas programs show promising results in terms of reductions in the prison population and prison expenditure, as well as significant investments in preventative and rehabilitative community based programs. 16

Выберите целевой абзац3