The core claim running through the series is that disparity equals discrimination. But disparity alone does not establish bias. Any serious analysis must ask a more uncomfortable question: are justice outcomes primarily driven by ethnicity, or by differences in offending patterns, prior convictions, and risk factors that the system is legally required to consider?
Over-representation is not the same as over-policing
New Zealand Police do not patrol by ethnicity; they patrol where crime is reported. Higher police contact reflects higher rates of victimisation and offending in particular communities — facts repeatedly confirmed by victim surveys, not just police data. Māori are also disproportionately the victims of violent crime, a reality largely absent from the series.
When like cases between Maori and Non-Maori are compared for offence severity, criminal history, and breach behaviour, many of the claimed disparities in charging and sentencing narrow significantly. Courts must assess criminal history, public safety risk, reoffending risk, and whether home detention is appropriate - not ancestry (whakapapa).
New Zealand Police do not patrol by ethnicity; they patrol where crime is reported. Higher police contact reflects higher rates of victimisation and offending in particular communities — facts repeatedly confirmed by victim surveys, not just police data. Māori are also disproportionately the victims of violent crime, a reality largely absent from the series.
When like cases between Maori and Non-Maori are compared for offence severity, criminal history, and breach behaviour, many of the claimed disparities in charging and sentencing narrow significantly. Courts must assess criminal history, public safety risk, reoffending risk, and whether home detention is appropriate - not ancestry (whakapapa).
To imply that judges, police, and prosecutors collectively operate a racially biased “pipeline” is a serious allegation, yet the series provides assertion in place of proof.
Bail and remand: risk, not race
The rise in remand numbers is real — and deeply concerning. But again, ethnicity is not the causal lever.
Remand decisions are driven by risk: risk of reoffending, risk of flight, risk of witness interference. Those risks rise sharply with repeat offending, breaches of bail, unstable housing, and substance abuse — all factors the courts must consider to protect victims and the public.
Calling bail laws “punitive” ignores why they were tightened in the first place: preventable violent offences committed by people already before the courts. Public safety is not a colonial construct; it is a core duty of the state.
Cases of extreme delay are unacceptable — but they are failures of court capacity and procedure, not evidence of racial targeting. A justice system that cannot deliver timely trials is unjust to everyone.
Culture cannot replace accountability
The series repeatedly argues that justice reform must reflect tikanga Māori and Te Tiriti obligations. But New Zealand’s justice system exists to uphold equal citizenship under one law, not parallel legal frameworks based on ancestry.
Equity is needs-based and universal. Tikanga (Maori Lore) is cultural and particular. Confusing the two risks undermining both.
There is nothing unjust about culturally appropriate support within prisons or during reintegration. But culture cannot explain away offending, nor can it substitute for accountability. A justice system that treats people differently based on ethnicity — whether harsher or more lenient — ceases to be just.
The real drivers are upstream
If we are serious about reducing imprisonment, the focus must shift upstream: early childhood neglect, school failure, addiction, violence in the home, and chronic welfare dependency. These are not justice system failures — they are social failures that manifest in the justice system.
Blaming courts and police may be politically attractive, but it does nothing to reduce victimisation or reoffending.
Reform needs realism, not rhetoric
New Zealand does need justice reform — faster courts, better rehabilitation, safer prisons, and more effective reintegration. But reform grounded in grievance narratives rather than evidence will fail the very communities it claims to protect.
Justice is not a Māori issue or a Pākehā issue. It is a public issue.
And a system that abandons equal treatment under the law in pursuit of ethnic outcomes is not reform — it is retreat.
Geoff Parker is a long-standing advocate for truth, equal rights, and equality before the law.
3 comments:
Poor parenting. So many parents simply should not be parents. Every 'expert' academic will disagree, of course.
Unfortunately, people like Mathew Tukaki are not interested in finding, acknowledging or telling the raw truth. It would be embarrassing. He, and readers of this website, should read Alan Duff's excellent book "A Conversation with my Country" It gives a good insight as to why Maori find themselves on the wrong side of the statistics
It seems to me that Matthew Tukaki isn't looking at, or commenting on, what's really driving crime among Maori. That's because, like other commentators, he actually doesn't want to examine the issue too closely. It would force him to face an uncomfortable truth: systemic bias/racism and colonisation have nothing to do with it. Maori are overrepresented in the crime stats because more of them commit crime. There's no getting around it.
"...culture cannot explain away offending..."
A relative who, some years ago, did an academic research project on pre-European conflict in the Auckland isthmus, is of the view that the cultural drivers of those times are deeply-ingrained in modern Maori society. Culture is usually very persistent and difficult to change. My relative's view is that violence, for instance, is a default response, driven by that deep history of conflict. This view has been reinforced by our experiences over many years. An acquaintance who enlisted in the NZ army commented on the fact that Maori fellow soldiers used their fists (rather than talk) to settle disputes, an approach which surprised our acquaintance.
I'm reminded, too, of the youth who killed that Scottish tourist in Taupo all those years ago. He was reported as saying that his upbringing resulted in him seeing violence against women as being normal.
During the pandemic and lockdown, said relative lived in an apartment building where much of the accommodation was turned over to social housing. The tenants (most of them Maori ) caused so many problems - theft, violence, intimidation, vandalism, drug-dealing, multiple noise complaints - that the body corporate was obliged to hire a security guard for a while. The first we knew of it was when we found out about the police call outs. Those tenants are gone now, thankfully, but the chaos they caused certainly hasn't been forgotten. We were infuriated by their sheer lack of consideration for other residents and the apartment owners.
"...early childhood neglect, school failure, addiction, violence in the home, and chronic welfare dependency."
I agree: these are the factors which underlie criminal behaviour. And yes to the previous commenter: most of that is down to poor parenting.
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