Acclaimed US filmmaker Ava DuVernay calls Māori crime rates 'a myth'

Assume that the chance of apprehension is 10% or whatever... it doesn't really matter.

How do you get apprehended? Well, first, you get reported. Or you get discovered in the course of an investigation.

In the US, the reason black people and Native Americans get shot and killed by cops as much as they do isn't because cops are racist, per se (a lot are, but the institutions probably aren't). It's because their police are trigger happy maniacs and the people who call the police are racist. Given you're talking to an American cop, there's a disturbingly high chance you're going to get shot. The chance that you're talking to a cop is different for various ethnicities.

It's a widely generalisable fact that minority groups are more likely to receive police attention. I think it was a Nigel Latta programme that pointed out that Maori youth (in particular) can engage in activities that elicit no response from randoms except when Maori youth do them. And it really all spirals from there.

The best way to get lots of prison time, it turns out, is to already have a criminal record. The best way to have a criminal record is to give the courts reason to give you one. And the best way of doing that is by not having a spotless record. Eventually you end up with minorities being the largest groups in prison.

Here's a "paradox"... in the Western world prison populations have been climbing but crime rates (as in the number of reported crimes) have been failling... how? The answer? Longer prison sentences. Watch 13th. Do the slightest amount of reading. Realise most of the analysis applies here too. Recall which groups are best suited to being given long prison sentences...

So... in other words... if a Maori individual is as likely to be apprehended as anyone else, but is more likely to be reported and hence has more opportunities to be apprehended...

Net effect? If one wants to disagree with DuVernay's generic claim, one needs to be...

  • making a semantic argument about what exactly myth means,
  • explaining why data consistent with "Maori are no more likely to be criminals than anyone else" is, in fact, not.
/r/newzealand Thread Parent Link - newshub.co.nz