Abstract
Rehabilitation and respect are not what many would expect a convicted criminal to encounter in the criminal justice system. Public opinion that offenders are not facing tough enough consequences persists. In spite of this is the growing movement of specialist criminal courts which target specific underlying causes of offending through therapeutic jurisprudence. Specialist criminal courts play a pivotal part in Aotearoa New Zealand’s judicial landscape and criminal justice reform. In this dissertation, I consider whether mainstreaming these specialist criminal courts’ best practices into the District Court can address the disparities between Māori and Pākehā in the criminal justice system.