One of the distinctive features of settler-colonial jurisdictions – namely New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States – is the significant over-representation of Indigenous peoples in all facets of the criminal justice system. Research consistently shows that Indigenous peoples are over-represented in arrest, conviction and imprisonment statistics, as well as rates of victimization, especially for crimes involving sexual and intimate partner violence.

The lived experiences of Indigenous peoples have long been associated with rurality, meaning that community structures are located in geographical spaces we understand today to be ‘rural’. Appending Indigenous lived experience with rurality has become associated with socio-economic deprivation that manifests in a range of poor social outcomes, including low educational attainment, poor health outcomes, drug and alcohol dependency, high rates of child abuse and/ or negative engagement with childcare and protection services, intimate partner and other forms of violence (see both Guggisburg, 2019 and McCausland and Vivian, 2010). It is no surprise, then, that connections between the concept of rurality and Indigenous peoples’ experiences of offending and victimization has long been established in criminology. Furthermore, it is becoming a key focus of research and analysis of the Indigenous lived experience within the developing sub-discipline of rural criminology (see Jones et al, 2016).

However, focusing investigation and analysis of Indigenous peoples’ experiences of crime and victimization within the geographical and conceptual space of ‘rurality’ is problematized by the fact that the demographic reality of Indigenous lived experience is not the same for all Indigenes. For example, in the Canadian context, only 26 per cent live ‘on reserve’, meaning that 74 per cent of Canadians who self-identify as Indigenous live ‘off reserve’. In comparison, in the United States context, the rate of reserve-based residence is much higher, up to 43 per cent. However, this means over 50 per cent reside off reserve.

Finally, a significant proportion of Aboriginal Australians live in urban contexts, a situation that continues to increase, whereas in New Zealand over 80 per cent of Māori live in urban contexts and have done so since the mid-1960s.