The undercounting of Indigenous Maori imprisoned by the New Zealand carceral state: a national record study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Indigenous Māori are imprisoned on a mass scale by the nation-state currently known as New Zealand, driven by racialised inequities that occur across the criminal legal system and a rapidly expanding carceral state. Lack of reliable data limits the ability to monitor and evaluate the health and disability impacts of imprisonment on Māori. We examined ethnicity data quality; specifically, potential miscounting of Māori in prison. All individuals who experienced at least one night of imprisonment between 2018 and 2021 were selected from the Department of Corrections (Corrections) data in the Stats NZ Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI). We compared counts and proportions of Māori using two sources of ethnicity information; Corrections and IDI's core data. Within this coho

SUBMITTER: King PT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12315448 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature