Men, women, Aborigines, young people etc. are all sociological concepts and arguments about them are speculative and divert attention from the one salient fact: All domestic violence has a perpetrator.

So does all violence in the streets, on the road, in the trains, in police custody - anywhere. Those who perpetrate violence, a form of bullying, are enemies polluting everyone’s life when they create an environment for us all that everyone knows accommodates the interests of the violent.

The answer is to treat enemies as enemies – that means no do-gooders focusing in how to help them. Just a harsh regime devoted to crushing them whenever they stick their heads above the parapet. No parole boards. No soft judges and magistrates. Violating an order to keep away from a person or a designated shelter: Ten years minimum. Violent assault wherever it happens – a wife thumped in the home, a pedestrian king-hit in the street, a traveller roughed up in a train, a youngster assaulted by a street gang – decades of gaol for a single offence. Sexual coercion up to and including rape – decades in gaol exposed to sensitivity training by old lags.

Funding is required not for programmes to help the violent but for designated shelters for the victims, indeed for anyone at all who seeks safety from violence, without having to wait for visible damage.

Overcrowding in gaols? End it by ending the war on drugs. No need to waste gaol space on people who take, sell, carry or distribute drugs – taking drugs is a voluntary decision and it’s up to the user to take responsibility for consequences which are amply advertised. Best personal solution – don’t touch the stuff. Best social solution – flood the market and the price will drop through the floor and will no longer fund criminals.

Hi Jules,

Your suggestions -

"Overcrowding in gaols? End it by ending the war on drugs. No need to waste gaol space on people who take, sell, carry or distribute drugs – taking drugs is a voluntary decision and it’s up to the user to take responsibility for consequences which are amply advertised. Best personal solution – don’t touch the stuff. Best social solution – flood the market and the price will drop through the floor and will no longer fund criminals..... "

might run into some problems: after all, ice is precisely a drug which leads to violence, and probably particularly domestic violence. And the more there is of it, the more people will use it, that's the point. And the more use, the more violence. I don't think people will go off it if it's cheaper. I don't think that's how it works.

Yes, of course, users should take responsibility for their actions. I'm sure the gods looking down from Olympus would agree with you. But cops all over Australia might argue the toss.

Domestic tensions + boredom + ice + lower prices = social disaster.

Joe

Re Loudmouth:

Making drugs cheap would not put people off using them. Rather the contrary. However it would put people off pushing them, and fighting over turf with other pushers, and spending a fortune importing them and importing weapons to protect their territory. More significantly the streets would become a buyers’ market which would in turn cut sharply back on the downstream crimes of users to fund their habit.

Poisons Acts: There are many laws regarding poison which would cover most currently illegal drugs. Think of potassium cyanide, KCN. There are laws against selling KCN to minors, to slipping it into someone’s drink, to leaving it unprotected, to disguising it as something harmless. Nobody would smash-and-grab raid a pharmacy to steal KCN, or nick it from hospital dispensaries.

Another good riddance along with the war on drugs would be the criminal corruption surrounding illegal drug supply, involving bent law enforcers, bent dispensers, bent pollies. An additional good riddance would be the bullying of human beings by officials to fight the war on drugs.

An essential companion to the decriminalisation of drugs would be a serious war on assault, with savage gaol sentences (in the multiple decades scale) for violence against anyone including a spouse – to be trebled if the offence is shown to be due to voluntary alcohol or drug intoxication or brain damage caused by taking or sniffing anything from Ice to Tarzan’s Grip.

Hi Jules,

" .... the streets would become a buyers’ market which would in turn cut sharply back on the downstream crimes of users to fund their habit."

Yes, with cheaper ice, burglaries may become fewer. With legal ice, the power of crime gangs may be reduced. Yes, indeed. But The rates of unprovoked violence, coward punches, and domestic violence, including violence against children, may massively increase.

So deaths from ice may massively increase, not necessarily amongst the ladies of Vaucluse, but most certainly amongst Indigenous people in country towns and remote 'communities'. I suspect that many of the thrill crimes around Adelaide, car chases through the Hills, innovative ways to break into homes, arson, random violence against strangers, etc. are possibly the outcomes of the use of ice. I'm surprised that an intelligent person such as yourself can't see the extreme dangers of cheaper ice.

On the other hand, with that satellite about to pass by Pluto, we may catch a glimpse of you. Wave if you see it :)

Joe

I don't think Loudmouth noticed my last paragraph. Replace the war on drugs with a war on violent criminals Not just violent crime with all sorts of silly programmes to make violent criminals nicer by appealing to them, but direct, in the face, war against the criminals themselves. whether their violence is in remote Australia or Vaucluse or anywhere in between.

Violent crime may be caused by anything from socioeconomic factors or nasty drugs to mental disorders, a rich field for social engineers and psychobabblers, but whatever the cause it won't happen if violent criminals don't commit it. Target the violent criminals, sweep the rubbish out of the homes and off the streets and into prison. At the same time remove the cash incentive to peddle drugs.

Also fund refuges, and step up the government ads, like the "No means NO" ads, stressing that assaulting people in the home is not just part of a "domestic", offenders are violent criminals and will be pursued until locked up. For decades. Without parole.

Ice, ISIS – a bit of onomatopoeia. One is the pointy end of the drug trade, the other is he pointy end of Islam.