Canberra ACT 0200

Almost a year since the killings at Port Arthur is a time to consider violence in Australian society, ways of conceptualising it, its causes and prevention. While violence (particularly interpersonal violence) has long been a subject of study by criminologists, the criminal justice system has contributed little to our understanding of and capacity to deal with the problem. This reflects, in part, the traditional roles of law enforcement agencies in focusing on individual acts of violence rather than seeing violence as an issue understandable at the population level. In recent years the public health community, responding to this lacuna, has seized the centre stage internationally, declaring interpersonal violence to be a leading public health problem and applying contemporary population health approaches to understanding and acting on the issue. They have the potential to pick up where the criminal justice system responses have been weakest: responding to violence at the population level, intersectorally and within