Interprovincial differences in the rates of minor crimes of violence and related disorders in New Zealand, 1853-1930: part 1

Abstract

Zwischen 1853 und 1930 wurde Neuseeland rapide durch hauptsächlich aus Großbritannien stammende Einwanderer kolonialisiert. Gegen Ende der 1870er Jahre sank die Rate der Kleinkriminalität (Tätlichkeiten, Trunkenheitsdelikte, Alkoholmißbrauch) dramatisch. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob die Ursachen dieser 'Ordnungswidrigkeiten' für alle 9 Distrikte Neuseelands die gleichen sind. Durch eine Faktorenanalyse und ein Modell von 22 Variablen kann die Autorin für jede Provinz je eine spezifische kausale Struktur herausarbeiten. Trotz dieser Differenzen läßt sich jedoch für die 'Kolonie' ein spezifisch britischer einheitlicher Lebensstil identifizieren. (pmb)

'Between 1853 and 1930 New Zealand was rapidly colonised by white settlers most of whom were British immigrants. From about the late 1870s their per capita rates of minor assaults drunkenness convictions, spirits consumption, and civil suits fell dramatically. The paper asks whether the causal structure underlying these 'disorders' was the same in every one of New Zealand's nine provincial districts. Even though New Zealand was comparatively homogenous in ethnic and cultural terms, the character of its provincial districts varied substantially in respect to other criteria such as policing, population size, level of economic development, urbanization, industrialization and so forth. To determine if the same explanatory model fits each of the nine provinces, the paper systematically applies two forms of factor analysis to a matrix of twenty two variables in each province. The paper finds that every province had a causal structure which differed in kind from that operating in the other provinces. However, these differences were not fundamental in type.' (author's abstract)