Source: Radio New Zealand
Awatea Mita UGP / Melody Thomas
Māori women are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, getting worse the further they progress through the system, a new factsheet from the Ministry of Justice shows.
The factsheet found while wāhine Māori made up 15 percent of people in New Zealand they made up 44 percent of all women who were proceeded against by police, 49 percent of women entering court, 66 percent of women remanded in custody, and 71 percent of women sentenced to imprisonment.
Awatea Mita is the Director of the National Youth and Justice Coalition, she said the factsheet confirms what wāhine Māori and advocates have been saying for years, that the deeper wāhine Māori move into the justice system, the more punitive the response becomes.
“So this is not simply about what someone did, it’s about how the system reacts in bail decisions, in risk assessments, in sentencing outcomes.
When disparity grows, the further someone moves through the system, that tells us something structural is happening. The system is not neutral, it is amplifying inequality.”
Analysis in the factsheet, Reducing the disproportionality of Māori in the criminal justice system: wāhine Māori, concluded that while some of the disproportionality – that is the over representation of one group in relation to others – can be explained by factors such as seriousness and history of offending, a proportion remains unexplained, particularly at later stages in the system.
Discretionary decisions made within the justice system, and therefore within the system’s control, contribute to this unexplained proportion.
By the time wāhine are sentenced to imprisonment the unexplained disproportionality is at its highest, at 54 percent.
The factsheet notes that if all of this unexplained proportion was addressed, this could decrease the number of wāhine Māori sentenced to imprisonment up to 149 each year.
“When more than half of the imprisonment gap cannot be accounted for by offence seriousness or history, we have to ask what else is driving those outcomes.
We also need to remember that offending history reflects cumulative contact with police and courts. So that exposure is not evenly distributed… there’s not a neutral starting point.
The report shows us that the disparity is not just about what people do, it’s about how the system escalates its response over time,” Mita said.
While factsheet itself doesn’t use the word racism, Mita said the escalating pattern of disparity can’t be explained by behaviour alone.
“When disparity grows at each stage of the system, from police to court to remand to imprisonment, and when a large portion of that gap remains unexplained, we have to look at structural bias.
This isn’t about individual prejudice, it’s about how bail frameworks operate when someone doesn’t have stable housing. It’s about how risk assessments interpret prior history. It’s about how discretion is exercised. So if a system repeatedly produces unequal outcomes for one group, then we need to examine the structures producing those outcomes.”
Reducing disproportionality of Māori in the criminal justice system overall is a priority strategic goal for the Ministry of Justice, with wāhine Māori as the focus of the first stage of this work.
“This is partly because ensuring equitable outcomes for wāhine Māori have broader positive impacts on whānau and communities, including improved youth outcomes and reduced pressure on other government support systems,” Ministry of Justice’s General Manager, Sector Insights, Rebecca Parish said.
“Ongoing analysis will help us monitor the impact of this work, and how best to continue addressing the disproportionality of wāhine Māori in the criminal justice system.”
Mita said it is a positive step that the Ministry is tracking and acknowledging the disparity, but describing disparity is not the same as reducing it.
“Meaningful reform would include strengthening bail access, reducing custodial remand for low level offences, investing in Māori led alternatives and shifting resources towards prevention and whānau support. Monitoring the problem is a start, but structural reform is the real test,” she said.
Mita said she would like to see fewer wāhine Māori entering custodial remand for non-violent offences and wāhine Māori designing and leading the solutions.
If Aotearoa is serious about justice, then a shift from managing disparity to preventing it is needed and that means investing on whānau well-being rather than relying on carceral escalation, she said.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
