Ethnicity and Bias in Police Contact Statistics

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
D M Fergusson ◽  
L J Horwood ◽  
M T Lynskey

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.

1978 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 43-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige

This minor revision in Polynesian scholarship, the undermining of the authenticity of the traditions as historical … is one of the most significant developments in New Zealand archaeology.This [belief in a Great Fleet] arose out of the desire of European scholars to provide a coherent framework by which to interpret the prehistory of New Zealand.As heavily as historians must rely on orally-derived data for their study of the African past, historians of Oceania are far more in thrall to such materials in attempting to reconstruct the history of the various Pacific island groups. Although archeology and historical linguistics can sometimes help to provide broad sequences and interrelationships as well as evidence concerning origins, neither can, of course, provide circumstantial local detail or close dating. Oral traditions, often supported by genealogies of sometimes extraordinary length and complexity, have been collected in all parts of the Pacific almost since the time of Cook, but the latter part of the nineteenth century was a period of particularly feverish activity. The result is a vast body of material, much of it still in manuscript form. Of this corpus far more relates to the Maori people of New Zealand than to the inhabitants of any other island group.In the course of the first half of this century a homogenized orthodox view of New Zealand's more remote past developed -- an interpretation based on three pivotal events, each of which came to be dated calendrically by means of Maori genealogies. The first was the arrival of the “discoverer” of New Zealand, one Kupe, who was dated to ca. 950. Then, two centuries later, came Toi and his companions. Finally, so this version goes, the so-called Great Fleet, comprising about seven large canoes (the number varies slightly) arrived in about 1350, and New Zealand began to be well and truly peopled by Maori.


Author(s):  
Kévin Maurin ◽  
Christopher Lusk

The evolution of divaricate plants in New Zealand has been the subject of long-running debate among botanists and ecologists. Hypotheses about this remarkable case of convergent evolution have focused mainly on two different types of selective pressures: the Plio-Pleistocene advent of cool, dry climates, or browsing by now-extinct moa. Here, we review the scientific literature relating to the New Zealand divaricates, and present a list of 81 taxa whose architectures fall on the divaricate habit spectrum. We recommend a series of standardised terms to facilitate clear communication about these species. We identify potentially informative areas of research yet to be explored, such as the genetics underlying the establishment and control of this habit. We also review work about similar plants overseas, proposing a list of 47 such species as a first step towards more comprehensive inventories; these may motivate further studies of the ecology, morphology and evolutionary history of these overseas plants which could help shed light on the evolution of their New Zealand counterparts. Finally, we compile published divergence dates between divaricate species and their non-divaricate relatives, which suggest that the divaricate habit is fairly recent (< 10 My) in most cases.


Author(s):  
Geoff Watson

Desmond Wood has produced a very readable social history of rugby union in New Zealand. The strength of the book lies in the way he synthesizes scholarly analyses of the game, including his own interviews and research, into an easily accessible style.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swagata Sinha Roy ◽  
◽  
Kavitha Subaramaniam ◽  

If one has not read local English novels like The Garden of Evening Mists and The Night Tiger, one would never be able to imagine the wonders of locales depicted in these two books. One of the reasons the authors here want to visit a said destination is because of the way a certain place is pictured in narratives. Tan Twan Eng brings to life the beauty of Japanese gardens in Cameron Highlands, in the backdrop of postWorld War II while Yangsze Choo takes us into several small towns of Kinta Valley in the state of Perak in her beautifully woven tale of the superstitions and beliefs of the local people in Chinese folklore and myth in war torn Malaysia in the 1930s and after. Many of the places mentioned in these two novels should be considered places to visit by tourists local and international. Although these Malaysian novelists live away from Malaysia, they are clearly ambassadors of the Malaysian cultural and regional heritage. In this paper, a few of the places in the novel will be looked at as potential spots for the coming decade. The research questions considered here are i) what can be done to make written narratives the new trend to pave the way for Visit Malaysia destinations? ii) how could these narratives be promoted as guides to the history and culture of Malaysia? The significant destinations and the relevant cultural history of the regions will be discussed in-depth to come to a relevant conclusion.


Derrida Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-294
Author(s):  
H. Peter Steeves
Keyword(s):  
To Come ◽  

The long history of the overlap of science and philosophy finds a focal point in cosmology. In an effort to examine what happens when science and deconstruction encounter, this essay thus begins with, and follows the path of, cosmology. I start by suggesting a new solution to the oldest question in cosmology: why is there something rather than nothing? From this, I attempt to outline the way in which necessity is thought to operate by means of natural laws, tracing the sense in which science's demand for falsifiable claims creates an aporia in which its truths are not ultimately truthful and its necessity is not necessary. Focusing on the ways in which différance and the autoimmune can help us open up the work of science, I come to suggest two new tropes, that of apoptosis and the remainder, arguing that the inherent openness of science can be one of its strengths, especially if we ask the question of what remains to be asked once science has answered a question.


1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F.J. Van Rensburg

‘Sister’, ‘brother’, and Svife’ references in utterances within conversational context (Gn 12:11-13, 18-19; 20:2, 4-5, 11-13; 26:7, 9) Four different types of nominal clauses containing ‘sister’ or ‘brother’ references, and six containing ‘wife’ references are identified. They are found to be introduced by the verb ‘to say’ in either the indicative, imperative (only ‘sister’ utterances), or phrased as interrogatives. These complex sentences, in turn, function as part of seven greater conversational contexts. The study thus focuses on kernel clauses, noting the way in which they are embedded and combined. This leads to suggestions regarding linguistic variation, the use of narrative techniques and the redactional history of formulas.


2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assimakis Tseronis

The publication of a dictionary is a means to describe, codify and ultimately standardise a language. This process is complicated by the lexicographer’s own attitude towards the language and the public’s sensitivity on language matters. The recent publication of the two most authoritative dictionaries of Modern Greek and their respective lexical coverage reveals the continuing survival of the underlying ideologies of the two sponsoring institutions concerning the history of the Greek language, as well as their opposing standpoints on the language question over the past decades, some 25 years after the constitutional resolution of the Greek diglossia, affecting the way they describe the synchronic state of language. The two dictionaries proceed from opposing starting points in attempting to influence and set a pace for the standardisation of Modern Greek by presenting two different aspects of the synchronic state of Greek, one of which focuses on the long history of the language and thus takes the present state to be only a link in an uninterrupted chain dating from antiquity, and the other of which focuses on the present state of Greek and thus takes this fully developed autonomous code to be the outcome of past linguistic processes and socio-cultural changes in response to the linguistic community’s present needs. The absence of a sufficiently representative corpus has restrained the descriptive capacity of the two dictionaries and has given space for ideology to come into play, despite the fact that both dictionaries have made concessions in order to account for the present-day Greek language.


2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Bennion

This paper discusses the history of treaty-making between Pacific island nations and European powers during the nineteenth century in order to assess the validity of the Treaty of Waitangi at international law. The author also draws some brief comparisons with treaty-making in Africa. The particular focus of the paper is an assessment of how the colonial powers would have viewed a document such as the Treaty. The conclusion of the paper is that the signatories would have presumed that the Treaty would have serious effect, and would be binding in international law.Editor’s note: This paper was originally written in 1987 as part of the Administrative Law LLM course at Victoria University of Wellington. After it was recently cited with approval in Sir Kenneth Keith's article "Public Law in New Zealand" (2003) 1 New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 3, it transpired that access to the paper was very limited. Despite its age, and the fact that much scholarship has been done in the intervening time, on the Treaty in particular, the material is still of considerable interest. Some changes have been made to the original text to cater for the passage of time.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 198-205
Author(s):  
Dianne Hall ◽  
Ronan McDonald

This article gives an overview, and brief history, of Irish studies in Australia and New Zealand, within an academic context and beyond. It surveys major publications and formal initiatives, but also accounts for why Irish studies has been less vibrant in Australian than other Anglophone countries in the Irish diaspora. The Irish in Australia have a distinct history. Yet, in recent years and in popular understanding, they have also sometimes been absorbed into ‘white’ or Anglo-Celtic Australia. This makes their claims to distinctiveness less pressing in a society seeking to come to terms with its migrant and dispossessed indigenous populations.


2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susannah Leigh Kan Shaw

This article examines whether an expansion to the tort of conversion to cover intangible property is warranted. In the 2007 case of OBG Ltd v Allan (OBG), the majority of the House of Lords held in favour of retaining the rule that only tangible property may be subject to an action in conversion, while the minority argued that expansion of the tort is necessary based on principle, the history of conversion and developments in other jurisdictions. The OBG decision is set in its historical context through an analysis of the origins and extensive history of the tort of conversion. The article concludes there is nothing in the history of the tort that stands in the way of expansion to cover cases of interference with intangible interests, and argues that such an extension would be a welcome development in the New Zealand context.


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