CRIME AMONG MAORIS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29273, 3 August 1960, Page 14

CRIME AMONG MAORIS

Mr Barnett Calls For Research (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. Aug. 2. Money should be spent on research into the cause of Maori crime and preventive measures that ought to be taken, said the former Secretary of Justice (Mr S. T. Barnett) in the annual report on the Justice Department “The incidence of crime among Maoris is the most serious and inexplicable factor in New Zealand crime,” he said. “Many facile explanations are offered. Many ameliorating measures are suggested. But none of them helps very much, because no-one knows all the facts, and no-one can point to any proven cause or causes. “All that we really do know is that people with a proportion of Maori blood are much more prone to criminal behaviour in some categories of offences than those of entire European descent,” he added. This Maori group was gradually increasing, and it would not be very long before it formed the majority of offenders charged in courts and either placed on probation or sent to penal institutions. “Making the most generous allowance for uncertainty as to the degrees of Maori blood, for the difference in cultural attitudes, and other such arguments, it remains undeniable that people identifiable as Maoris, because of their birth and upbringing, are one of the two major problems in national crime,” he said. Mr Barnett said he would say flatly from consideration of a good sample of court records that Maoris had the same justice as the pakehas. Many should never have fallen into crime, and as a group they were certainly the most tractable and responsive prisoners.