Lynch mob calls for harsher punishment of Nikolas Delegat for repeatedly punching a police officer have claimed that his wealth, status, ability to afford a good lawyer and his skin colour all led to a light sentence. The skin colour issue became a major focus especially after the ‘Independent’ Police Complaints Authority (IPCA) released an analysis of pre-charge warnings vs prosecutions from police in different regions around NZ and towards Pakeha vs Maori accused.

Unfortunately, the IPCA didn’t see fit also to undertake a further simple calculation to compare the rate of pre-charge warnings given to women vs men. If they had they would almost certainly have found that females are much more likely to receive pre-charge warnings than are males, and that the gender difference here is much greater than any racial difference.

The IPCA’s racial comparison did not amount to evidence of racial bias by police. Their report emphasized that they did not find any evidence clearly demonstrating differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity. The different pre-charge warning rate was largely explained by the fact that Maori accused were much more likely than Pakeha to have previous convictions.

However, there is good research evidence by criminologist Greg Newbold that our justice system practices significant gender bias favouring women. Anecdotally too it is very rare to come across cases of female offending in which women receive treatment or punishment comparable to that for men.

The lynch mob that targeted Mr Delegat included women whose hypocrisy was considerable in complaining that a young male may have received a lenient sentence when they are part of the non-penis gender that almost always receives lenient sentences.

Oh, did we forget to mention that the police officer punched by Mr Delegat was a female officer? This was no doubt a major driver of the public outcry. The White Ribbon campaign has encouraged us all to care only about violence when it’s done to women and by men. Assault of a female by a male is still treated as twice as bad in sentencing tariffs as assault by anyone of a mere male. Many male police officers are assaulted in the course of their duties and the offenders receive comparable sentences to that for Mr Delegat, but when did we last hear an indignant outcry in those cases? Despite the insistence that female police be paid equally to male police, male officers continue to be called upon to subdue most of the violent offenders and to go to the front line in the most dangerous situations. Those confronting armed offenders will almost all be men. Although there may be exceptions, that general tendency is unlikely to change any time soon because it’s based in fundamental genetic instinct.