Increasing Cairns DV rates linked to skyrocketing crime
Record car thefts, child removals and youth in the out-of-care home system have been directly linked to kids fleeing violence and abuse in the home as Cairns DVO breaches surpass 2,500.
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Record car thefts and children entering the out-of-care home system have been directly linked to kids fleeing violence and abuse in the home as Cairns DVO breaches in the past year surpass 2,500.
A night riding along with Cairns police has revealed a shocking insight into just how much time officers spend dealing with often complex domestic violence matters that chew up one-third of the city’s law enforcement resources.
A total of 2,513 DV offences were recorded in 2022-23.
Arriving at a DV call out at the notorious Murray St flats an unmarked police car drives past a group of women and children rattled by what has just happened.
They are sitting in the dark on the cold concrete floor of the car park.
They are waiting to get back inside – for their home to be made safe.
Inside officers talk down a teen that moments before had been rampaging through the unit threatening a family member with a knife.
A domestic violence order was already in place.
Operations leader at the Cairns Station, acting inspector Jason Chetham parks and heads in to assist officers already on the scene.
Similar situations play out every day, every night, through the district.
And for every moment on the frontline there’s hours of paperwork.
“Cairns is a very demanding district with calls for service and we have a small population, so obviously there’s some social issues here that are generating that kind of thing,” he said.
“ (DV accounts) for about one-third of all our calls for service.
“It’s a challenging place to work.”
In 2022-23, Cairns has the unenviable accolade of recording the state’s fourth highest number of charges in relation to the contravention of a DVO behind Brisbane, Beenleigh and Townsville.
A total of 1,424 DVO applications were made to Cairns courts in the same period which amounted to a significant increase of 15.8 on the previous 12-month period.
Cairns Domestic Violence Service chief executive officer Sandra Keogh indicated if statistics were calculated as a per head of population Cairns and Townsville would lead the state.
“I think we are third in the state for nonlethal strangulation,” she said.
Ms Keogh said while the numbers themselves were concerning, a link between an unstable and violent home life and youth crime, alongside women’s homelessness tore at the social fabric of Cairns.
“If you look at the information from the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce you see a really strong intersect between trauma, child safety and youth justice and how things start to unfold for people,” she said.
“There’s certainly a correlation between that family trauma and youth justice.
“It’s not OK to steal people’s cars but these kids are children and come from a traumatic background and they need a different kind of support, not boot camps and the research shows that’s not what works for them.”
Indigenous women were 27 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault as non-Indigenous females. The number skyrocketed to 51 times more likely for victims living in remote areas between July 2017 and June 2019, according to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework summary report of 2023.
A statewide trend of rising DV order applications has translated to a 15.8 per cent increase in Cairns, a surge of 12.9 per cent in Townsville, while in Mount Isa court applications skyrocketed 24.5 per cent in 2022/23.
Children fleeing abuse, alcoholism, drug addiction and violence in the home often ended up on the street and then become entangled within the youth justice and the highly criticised residential care home system.
“These kids come from very challenging backgrounds and it’s very confronting and very sad at times to see what they have at home, if you call it home,” acting inspector Jason Chetham said.
“Clearly, there’s some very difficult backgrounds for these kids. That’s a really big part of the story.”
In acknowledging the unprecedented demand for out-of-care home support, Child Safety Minister Craig Crawford last week said he was “toying with the idea” of a review into the costly and controversial resi care system.
And on Friday $3m in funding was announced to strengthen the domestic violence sector’s capability to respond to First Nations people.
Developing contraception resources, working with men in their own language and establishing a technology abuse detection service will be among the priorities.
Townsville, Cairns, Cape York as well as the southeast, Wide Bay, Rockhampton and the Darling Downs are expected to receive grants.
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