A Northern Territory Indigenous health expert is calling for more police to maintain law and order in Aboriginal town camps in Alice Springs, and similar communities in Broome in Western Australia.
About 2,500 people live in the Alice Springs camps, where violence and substance abuse is common.
Mick Gooda, of Darwin's Co-Operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health, says he does not support a proposal by the federal government to take children at risk of abuse away from their families and put them into special housing under armed guard.
But he says the camps need a police presence.
"There are standards of behaviour that we expect in a civilised society that don't happen in those places. People talk about self-determination. I've worked in communities in Western Australia where that was raised as an issue (illustration) of why you shouldn't intervene. If you could show me women and children exercising their self-determination, I'd probably wear it. But self-determination for the strong isn't self-determination at all. The amount of violence in those communities is just overwhelming."