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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Current fines

Various blogs have noted that the justice Dept is kicking around the idea of writing off fines given to habitual defaulters as a waste of effort to collect. Bad idea. All fines should be pursued equally and defaulters over 90 days locked up.

Was more interested in this hidden stat though.
Offenders at present owe $790 million in fines. Almost $450m of that is overdue

That's an awful lot of fines that are current. $340 million. Did we actually commit that much crime last month?

What a bunch of criminals we are. All that wedge due next month and if not paid then it supposedly goes overdue. An awful lot of traffic tickets.

Due on the 20th of May, assuming the Justice Dept is run like a normal business.

HT Kiwiblog


1 comment:

ZenTiger said...

Good point.

I had my own rant about this. I suggested alternatives to fines. Crime doesn't pay

I also made some gratuitous assumptions, which might be wrong. I would like to see a breakdown of the fines by

type (traffic,theft etc)
% of fines attached to repeat offenders
total fines charged per annum
% of fines by beneficiaries
% of fines by age group

etc