Fines lose deterrent effect once offenders owe $2000

The review of the increasingly ineffective fines system is now in its second phase, Courts Minister Rick Barker announced yesterday.

The amount owed in outstanding fines has ballooned, drawing criticism from Opposition MPs.

Mr Barker said the infringement system had been useful for 38 years, but was coming under increasing strain.

The system was started simply to issue parking tickets but fines were now collected for 19 infringement regimes and issued by about 100 different organisations.

Mr Barker said the fact that nearly 40 per cent of the 2.6 million infringement notices issued each year were filed at the District Court for enforcement meant the system was not working as it should.

Infringers often clocked up such large fines that paying them became unrealistic.

"Part of our stocktake was a qualitative study of young infringers with multiple unpaid infringement fines," Mr Barker said.

"Once these young people accumulated fines of around $2000 they no longer saw payment as a realistic option and further infringements did not act as a deterrent," he said.

"This shows we need to identify people with fines approaching this level at an earlier stage so we can ... make effective interventions."

Demerit points or issuing more warnings were being considered.

Mr Barker said the second phase of developing new policy would be reported back to Cabinet within the next six months.

It would focus on:

* Whether new guidelines, and possibly new laws, were needed to make all infringements schemes more consistent.

* Ways to improve compliance and remove payment barriers.

* Getting tougher on people who tried to evade paying fines.

- NZPA