Maybe it isn’t racism

The Herald reports:

The Police Minister says there’s “no place for racism in the New Zealand Police” and promises if instances are found, it will be weeded out.

Stuart Nash said he did not think there was systemic racism in the police.

He was asked today to explain the over-representation of Māori in police statistics and said “we are dealing with that at the moment”.

The over-representation is primarily because more crimes are committed. This is not the fault of Police.

Men are also massively over-represented in police statistics. This is not because the Police are sexist against men. It is because men commit more crimes.

There are legitimate issues around when Police use discretion, if they use diversion, what charges are laid. But any issues there make up only a small portion of the huge difference in offending rates.

Media who assume that the over-representation of a particular demographic in crime statistics must be the fault of the Police in some way, do the public a disservice.