Same crime - different time

Geoffrey Palmer. Michael Bradley / Getty Images

Thinking of drink-driving? Steer away from Napier, where you've got the greatest chance of being jailed. Robbery? You definitely don't want to try that in Gisborne, where there's a 100 per cent chance you'll be sent to prison if convicted. In Dunedin, however, only 40 per cent of convicted robbers are locked up.

The major differences in sentences meted out by courts for the same crimes in different regions are revealed in a report released this week.

District courts in Napier and the Christchurch/Westland region appear particularly tough on some crimes, while Auckland and Wellington courts generally seem more lenient.

Fourteen per cent of those appearing in Napier for driving under the influence will go to prison, while in Auckland and Wellington just 2 and 3 per cent respectively will.

Only 3 per cent of those sentenced for theft in Tauranga will be jailed, compared to 12 per cent in the Christchurch/Westland region.

Thirteen per cent of car joy-riders in Gisborne are imprisoned, compared with 47 per cent sentenced for the crime in Palmerston North.

The variations, disclosed in the Law Commission report, are described as surprisingly large and inappropriate by president Sir Geoffrey Palmer.

"It's as if there are a whole lot of separate justice systems out there."

The disparity in sentencing is one of the reasons both the Government and the commission argue the development of a new Sentencing Council, announced this week, is necessary.

The variations are particularly apparent for lower-level offending and "the greatest inconsistency is at the threshold of first imprisonable offence," Sir Geoffrey said.

He believed this was a result of a lack of benchmarks or guidelines for judges, which the council would establish.

More serious offences are more often subject to Court of Appeal examination which effectively creates guidelines, but few lower-level cases are appealed.

The report analysed 65 different offence types and 12 different offence sub-categories in each of the 17 district court regions during 2004 and 2005.

It said the data did not make allowance for the effect of an offender's previous offences on the prison sentence they received, but given the large number of convictions examined it was not unreasonable to assume these would not differ markedly across regions.

Differences in offence classification - a serious assault in one area may be classed a minor or grievous assault in another - might have distorted some data, it said.

But Sir Geoffrey said it "remains quite marked and it's very hard to explain that with normal kinds of variation".

"Sometimes you'll find that you get regional variations of opinions that the judges may be responding to about certain offences," he said.

"This happened in Britain in one instance I looked at, where there was a whole lot of handbag-snatching going on in a particular town and they went heavy on handbag-snatchers for a while."

The reasons for the differences were complex and needed further investigation, he said.

Concerns about relativities between the different sentences imposed for different types of crime are also behind the establishment of the council, which will take two years to deliver a set of sentencing guidelines for judges. These will have to be approved by Parliament.

Sir Geoffrey wasn't prepared to offer examples of which sentences the commission believed were either too harsh or too lenient compared to others, saying the work had yet to be done.

"There is a lot of value at stake in deciding which variety of offences is more serious than another variety."

The commission has been tasked with reviewing all maximum sentences and the Government has agreed it will repeal directions introduced in the Sentencing Act 2002 telling judges to impose the maximum penalties for the worst offences.

Sir Geoffrey said those directions would be reinstated in the guidelines, but the council had to start work with a clean slate, instead of being impeded by restrictions already in statutes.

It was impossible to say whether the review might result in changes to the overall sentence imposed or actually served for specific offences until further research and consultation were undertaken. "It's probably not very helpful to look at this as softening or hardening. It's actually capable of being either or neither."