Ethnicity and Bias in Police Contact Statistics
| Published date | 01 December 1993 |
| Date | 01 December 1993 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486589302600302 |
AUST
&NZ
JOURNAL
OF CRIMINOLOGY (December 1993) 26 (193-206)
ETHNICITYAND BIAS IN
POLICE
CONTACT STATISTICS
D M Fergusson, L J Horwood and M T Lynskey*
193
The relationships between ethnicity, self/parentally reported offending and rates
of
police contact
wereexamined in a birth cohort
of
Christchurch (New Zealand)
bom
children studied to the age
of
15 years. This analysis suggestedthat whilst children
of
Maori/Pacific Island descentoffended 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 2.9times more likelyto 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
suggestedthat children
of
Maori/Pacific Island descent werein 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
contactstatistics contain a bias which exaggeratesthe differences in the rate
of
offending by children
of
Maori/Pacific Island descent and Pakeha children.
It is well known that children and young people of Maori and Pacific Island descent
in New Zealand have higher rates of officially recorded offences than children of
European (Pakeha) descent (New Zealand Department of Statistics 1986; Fifield
and Donnell 1980; Norris and Lovell 1988; Lovell and Norris 1990). These trends
have been perhaps best illustrated in a 14 year longitudinal study of a birth cohort of
New Zealand children reported by Lovell and Norris (1990) who found that children
of Maori descent had rates of officially recorded offending which were
approximately 2- 5 times higher
than
children of Pakeha descent. This persistent
tendency for Maori and Pacific Island young people to have higher rates of officially
recorded offending than young people of Pakeha descent has led to a search for the
explanation of
the
origin of these differences.
One explanation that has been proposed by a number of authors is that the
apparent ethnic differentials in offending rates are largely or wholly due to a bias in
the ways in which offending is measured using official statistics. (Duncan 1970;
Hampton 1974; Jackson 1988; Newbold 1992; Pratt 1990; Sutherland, Hippolite,
Smith and Galbreath 1973). Official statistics not only measure offending behaviours
but also reflect the legal, social and
other
processes which lead to young people
being detected and classified as offenders. It has been suggested that owing to a
series of biases in the ways in 'which offending is detected and classified, children of
Maori and Pacific Island descent who offend are more likely to come to official
attention than Pakeha offenders, thus leading to a bias in official statistics which
exaggerates ethnic differentials in offending rates.
In a previous
paper
we presented apartial analysis of this issue bycomparing rates
of self and parentally reported offending amongst children of Maori/Pacific Island
descent and Pakeha descent in a birth cohort of New Zealand children studied to
the age of 14 years (Fergusson, Horwood and Lynskey 1993). This analysis suggested
*Associate Professor David M Fergusson; L John Horwood, Research Fellow; Michael T Lynskey, Junior
Research Fellow; Christchurch Health and Development Study, Christchurch School of Medicine,
Christchurch Hospital, Christchurch, New Zealand.
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