New Zealand Law Society - $588 million owed in unpaid infringements and fines

$588 million owed in unpaid infringements and fines

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At 29 February 2020 a total of $588,624,387 was owed to the Ministry of Justice due to unpaid infringement fines and court-imposed fines.

This information was released by Justice Minister Andrew Little in response to a written parliamentary question from National MP Mark Mitchell.

The infringements include collection types of local authority infringement, Police infringement and Other infringement. Court-imposed fines (Major) includes fines where the offence may carry a prison term, while (Minor) includes offences below this threshold.

The data is taken from an operational database at a point in time and may be subject to change as new data is continually recorded or recoded.

Debt owed to Ministry of Justice due to unpaid infringement fines and court-imposed fines, 29 February 2020
Collection typeOwed% Total
Court-imposed fine (Major)$184,703,62231.4%
Court-imposed fine (Minor)$157,1530.0%
Court-imposed Offender Levy$4,040,3820.7%
Driver Licence Stop Order Fee$954,6760.2%
Local Authority Infringement$117,486,97120.0%
Police Infringement$275,084,45346.7%
Other Infringement$5,974,0001.0%
Manually Created$223,1300.04%
TOTAL$588,624,387100.0%
Fines and infringements collected

In response to another question from Mr Mitchell, Mr Little provided information on infringement and court-imposed fines collected between 1 October 2019 and 1 March 2020. The data provided is as at the end of the calendar month.

The information shows that over the period a total of $89,567,206 was collected, of which 70.3% ($62,922,646) was infringement fines.

Total infringement and court-imposed fines collected between 1 October 2019 and 1 March 2020
Type of fine collected31-Oct-1930-Nov-1931-Dec-1931-Jan-2029-Feb-20
Infringement fines$13,367,841$13,467,579$11,567,021$12,000,926$12,519,279
Court-imposed fines$6,087,464$6,057,395$5,418,578$4,609,016$4,472,107
Total collection$19,455,305$19,524,974$16,985,599$16,609,942$16,991,386