Same crime – different outcomes: do court outcomes differ systematically by ethnicity?

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Using administrative data from Stats NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), the study analyses whether people of different ethnicities are treated differently in Aotearoa’s criminal justice system.

About the project

This research project examines court outcomes for first-time offenders prosecuted for violating drink-driving restrictions, a common offence where the measured alcohol level (breath or blood) ensures the similarity of the crime. The project uses Stats NZ’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), which includes court charges data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). This dataset provides detailed information on offence type, prosecuting agency, plea type, outcomes, sentences, and, for the period 2007–2013, recorded alcohol levels for all drink-driving incidents.

Using a unique individual identifier within the dataset, the research links offenders’ socio-demographic characteristics, such as ethnicity, with their court outcomes. This allows for a comparison of court decisions and sentencing between Māori and Pākehā offenders with similar alcohol levels and criminal backgrounds. The analysis will also be extended to compare court outcomes between Pacific people and Pākehā offenders. This project aims to shed light on potential ethnic disparities in judicial outcomes while controlling for relevant factors such as age, education, and income.

Grant amount

$72,670 over 12 months, starting in January 2025

About Alexander Plum

Alexander Plum (he/him) is the Principal Investigator. He has been a Senior Research Fellow at the NZ Policy Research Institute (NZPRI, AUT) since 2017. His research centers around traditionally marginalized communities and his empirical studies aim to identify policy-relevant scope to improve the well-being of these populations in Aotearoa. Alex has used the Ministry of Justice’s court charges data on several projects, including the role of the first child’s gender on the father’s criminal behaviour, the impact of the 2004 Clean Slate legislation on employment and earnings, or the impact of lowering the minimum alcohol purchasing age from 20 to 18 in December 1999 on alcohol-related crimes.