Ethnicity and Bias in Police Contact Statistics

Abstract

The relationships between ethnicity, self/parentally reported offending and rates of police contact were examined in a birth cohort of Christchurch (New Zealand) born children studied to the age of 15 years. This analysis suggested that whilst children of Maori/Pacific Island descent offended at a significantly higher rate than European (Pakeha) children, there were clear differences in the magnitude of ethnic differentials in offending depending on the way in which offending was measured. On the basis of self/parentally reported offending, children of Maori/Pacific Island descent offended at about 1.7 times the rate of Pakeha children. However, on the basis of police contact statistics these children were 2.9 times more likely to come to police attention than Pakeha children. These differences between self/parentally reported offending rates and rates of police contact could not be explained by the fact that Maori/Pacific Island children offended more often or committed different types of offences than Pakeha children. Logistic modelling of the data suggested that children of Maori/Pacific Island descent were in the region of 2.4 times more likely to come to official police attention than Pakeha children with an identical self/parental reported history of offending. These results are generally consistent with the hypothesis that official police contact statistics contain a bias which exaggerates the differences in the rate of offending by children of Maori/Pacific Island descent and Pakeha children.