The Health, Drug, and Crime Problems of the Aborigines

      Data on the health of Aboriginal people is limited due to many cases of disease not being reported and the only information sources are the Aboriginal medical centers that were set up in many of the communities in the ‘70's. Nonetheless, it is clear that Aborigines have the worst health of any minority group in Australia. As a result, the life expectancy is approximately 20 years under the national average and the infant mortality rate average is more than five times the rate of the total Australian population. This is largely because many Aborigines suffer from stress-related conditions such as depression, alcoholism, diabetes, obesity, hypertension and trauma. Commonly found infectious diseases such as influenza, syphilis, and even trachoma, are also to blame. Nearly all of these issues could be solved if the bad nutrition and low standards of hygiene, as well as the excessive alcohol intake which are all heavily influenced by the level of poverty, were addressed and fixed.

     
     Alcohol and other drugs were introduced into Aboriginal culture very suddenly when European settlers arrived in 1788. The Aboriginal people had never been in contact with the drugs that they introduced before and they were not able to cope with their consequences. Most Aborigines with alcohol and drug problems blame their addictions to their struggles with unemployment, poverty and little self-confidence caused by racism and discrimination. Among young Aborigines, sniffing gasoline has increased in frequency. “A study by the Ngahampa Health Council in 1994 found that about 1/3 of Aborigines in the 10 to 24 age group are affected by this addiction.” More recently, cases of Aboriginal heroin addicts have even been reported particularly among the urban population.     
     The crime rate of Aborigines is much higher than the crime rate of the total Australian population. For example, 80% of the Northern Territories’ prisoners are of Aboriginal descent. The lower socio economic status of the Indigenous people is likely the biggest reason for this behavior. However, another viable cause could be that 13% of Aborigines said in a survey that they had at least once been physically attacked or verbally threatened in the last 12 months prior to the survey. Regardless, a high percentage of Aboriginal arrests are alcohol related. The mandatory sentencing law in the Northern Territory affects Aboriginal people greater than non-Aboriginals because an Aborigine can get arrested for a longer period for committing a number of "petty crimes" then the non-Aborigines although this issue has been under review.

                   

Nadja Blickle 

    2000  The Present Situation of Aborigines in Australia 

        http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/103958/the-present-situation-of-aborigines-in-australia, accessed February 8, 2015 

George Kashouh 
    Travel the Whole World - Darwin 

       http://www.travelthewholeworld.com/traveling-australia/darwin/