Faced with a man who had racked up more than $93,000 in outstanding fines, the Chief District Court Judge has labelled the current provisions for dealing with serious fine defaulters as "inadequate".
Nathan James Bentley appeared in Lower Hutt District Court with $93,000 of fines outstanding and no means to pay
them. Since 1999, he has paid just $970 of the total.
Judge David Carruthers told the court he understood there were further infringement notices against Bentley which had yet to come to court.
Bentley had previously been sentenced to community service and periodic detention on several occasions, but had failed to complete the sentences every time, accumulating more fines.
Judge Carruthers said that under the Summary Proceedings Act, judges could direct a warrant to seize property, order the arrest of the defendant, or make a deduction order to a bank account.
But there was no provision for a court to imprison offenders if they did not have the means to pay.
Defendants could be charged with breach of community service and if they failed to carry that out could face prison. But the maximum amount of community work that could be ordered was just 400 hours.
"If I was to take a notional figure of $10 per hour, then the most that Mr Bentley could be said to be working off his fines by community work would be some $4000," Judge Carruthers said.
He said that in the past month Bentley had made "sudden and strenuous efforts" to meet his community work obligations, leading the Probation Service to withdraw an application to cancel the order, which had been granted.
He adjourned the case until today to allow all the matters to be heard together, including the breach of community work charges, some minor offences and an assault charge.
- NZPA
