This review provides a critical overview of Indigenous peoples’ interactions with criminal justice systems. It focuses on the experiences of Indigenous peoples residing in the four major Anglo-settler-colonial jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. The review is built around a number of key arguments, including that centuries of colonization have left Indigenous peoples across all four jurisdictions in a position of profound social, economic, and political marginalization; that the colonial project, especially the socioeconomic marginalization resulting from it, plays a significant role in the contemporary over-representation of Indigenous peoples in settler-colonial criminal justice systems; and that a key failure of both governments and the academy has been to disregard Indigenous peoples responses to social harm and to rely too heavily on Western theorizing, policy, and practice to solve the problem of Indigenous over-representation. Finally, we argue that little will change to reduce the negative nature of Indigenous–criminal justice interactions until the settler-colonial state and the discipline of criminology show a willingness to support Indigenous peoples’ desire for self-determination and for leadership in the response to the social harms that impact their communities.

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T hiS paper provides an overview of the relationship between Maori and the criminal justice system in New Zealand since Moana jackson published "Maori and the Criminal justice System: He Whaipaanga Hou" in 1988. jackson argued that the cultural insensitivity and blas inherent in the criminal justice system, lies at the heart of the Maori over-representation problem. The focus of my paper is on the incorporation of Maori justice practices and philosophies within the family group conferencing forurn established in 1989. The discussion of this initiative will take place within the framework of an evaluation of 'bi-culturalism' and the struggle by Maori to achieveautonomy in the realm of justice.Colonization is always lethal to the colonized, Oliver (1995: 19) New Zealand, like other Settler..societies such as Canada and Australia, continues to experience a high level of tension between sections of its majority (Pakeha/European) and indigenous (Maori) populations. The current ethnic tensions in N ew Zealand are in part, attributable to the perceived necessity for 'nation..destroying' in colonial and neo..colonial processes of nation.. building. This destructive element of the New Zealand neo..colonial process is reflected not just in current ethnic unrest, signified by continuing indigenous protests and disputes over land, but in both the poor socio ..economic status of the indigenous population 1 (jackson, 1995;Walker, 1990) and their often negative relationship with the irnposed criminal justice ordering that currently predominates' (jackson, 1988).The unsettled nature of ethnic relations in neo..colonial New Zealand can be attributed to a number of factors, including the post ..Second World War heteroge.. neous immigration patterns; both internal (the urban..drift of a once rural ..based indigenous population

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This article critically analyses the role that criminological theory and specific policy formulations of culture play in New Zealand's state response to Māori crime. We begin by charting policy responses to the "Māori problem" during the 1980s to the 2000s, with a particular focus on policies and interventions based on theorising that Māori offending is attributable to loss of cultural identity, through to the current preference for risk factor and criminogenic needs approaches. The second part of the article critiques strategies employed by administrative criminologists who, in partnership with the policy sector, attempt to elevate their own epistemological constructions of Indigenous reality in the policy development process over that of Indigenous knowledge and responses to social harm.