A COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT APPROACH TO CRIME PREVENTION IN ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES

community which is trying to come to grips with a number of problems threatening its social order. In response to community unrest and high levels of juvenile offending, the council closed its canteen in April 1991. However the sly grog trade increased. Later in the year, in response to growing community violence, the government told the school's thirteen state teachers they could leave Aurukun if they felt unsafe. The eight who took up the offer have not been replaced. The council and the government agreed to send in a task force or support group of three people to devise recommendations to deal with the situation. John Adams, Phil Venables and the author of this paper became the support group. A community development approach was taken because of a firm belief that the community itself had the answers to the problems and that unless solutions were generated by the community, it would not own these solutions and not have the will to make them successful. The Community A fundamental issue, however, was that this community had a large number of clan groups and their culture was still strong, so the settlement could not be treated as a single community. People in this community identify with family, clan and regional ceremonial associations. The church, with government support, created an artificial community and this is a major clue for present tension within the settlement. In talking of community development, the concept of community needs to be defined. Our approach was to have discussions with all the major clan groups, and families in the settlement, as well as community organisations like the women's clan group, and the church group, the Aboriginal Shir