Unpaid fines arrest risk

Press, 30 September 1983, Page 1

Unpaid fines arrest risk

An effort by the District Court to clear a backlog oi unpaid driving and parking fines has resulted in the issuing this week of 68S warrants to arrest nonpayers. The warrants are being dealt with by 15 staff in the police inquiry section in . addition to their normal duties.

Mr Robert Twidle; the Christchurch District Court registrar, said that the large number of warrants suddenly issued had come from a decision last June to reduce the time taken to enforce the payment of fines. “An offender has by law 28' days in which to pay a fine,” said Mr Twidle. “If they don’t pay we issue a summons calling on them to present themselves to be examined on their means and how they are going to pay their fine. “Because of staffing problems and because we were concentrating on other matters, the time taken to issue the summons gradually got extended to 12 to 14 weeks after the fine was imposed. “In an endeavour to bring it back closer to the 28 days we had a purge in enforcement in June. In that month we issued 1800 summonses. “As a result of those summonses, 689 warrants were issued this week. In about 415 of the 689 cases the summons was served, but the offender failed to answer. In the balance of the cases the warrants were issued because we were unable to locate the offender.” The fines concerned were originally imposed six months or more ago.

In the 12 months to August 31, $2,667,174 in fines were imposed by the courts in Christchurch. This compares with $1,966,051 in the same period last year. At present $791,943 is outstanding, although not all of that is overdue; some has been imposed only recently and the 28-day period for payment is not yet up. When a warrant for nonpayment of fines is executed, the offender can pay the fine at once or face arrest.