Tracey McIntosh on inequality in Aotearoa's criminal justice system

The Policy Fix

Aotearoa New Zealand has one of the world’s highest incarceration rates. Māori are more likely to get arrested than Pākehā, once arrested more likely to get prosecuted, once prosecuted more likely to get locked up. The majority of our people in prison are poor, and a sharply increasing number of imprisoned people are Māori women. What are the causes of the gross inequalities in our criminal justice system, and what should we do about them? Professor Tracey McIntosh of the University of Auckland has studied these issues for many years and she discusses her thinking with The Policy Observatory’s Keri Mills.