The review summarises international and New Zealand research findings on bias against ethnic minority and indigenous peoples at key stages of the criminal justice system. The discretion points examined include: stop and search, arrest, charging, prosecution, conviction, sentencing (including decisions surrounding legal representation, plea, bail, mode of trial, and pre-sentence reports), custodial sentence management decisions within the prison system, and parole.
The review is based on research published during the last 40 years, and concentrates exclusively on literature from Australia, Canada, England and Wales, the United States, and New Zealand. It represents the most comprehensive review of the literature on race/ethnicity and the criminal justice system undertaken in New Zealand to date.
It focuses predominantly on the adult criminal justice system and examines decisions affecting offenders rather than victims. While it was originally intended that the review would focus on Māori and Pacific offenders, the paucity of information published about Pacific offenders meant that the majority of the New Zealand research included is based solely on Māori offenders.