Great headline on Simon Power’s latest press release–
Offender levy collection rate exceeds expectations
The Government’s $50 offender levy has reached its first-year target of $2 million nearly five months earlier than expected, Justice Minister Simon Power said today. Since July last year, all convicted offenders have been required to pay a $50 levy at the time of sentencing, regardless of the crime they commit. The levy is collected after reparation and before fines, and is in addition to any sentence or court order. The money is used to fund eight additional entitlements and services for victims of serious crime.
Great idea right? Except the Ministry of Justice has done damn all to enforce payment and the collection costs exceed what has been taken in. Only 55% of offenders have paid the levy. Why have a levy if its not going to be paid 100%?
The 55% who have paid have contributed $2 million. Err, except they haven’t really paid. $457,000 is under payment arrangement. $1.2 million is still to be paid.
That’s not all. Collection costs so far are $1.1 million. It also cost $1.3 million to set the system up. So what we have got is an account with $2.4 million in debits and $800,000 in credits leaving us in the red by $1.6 million. That’s without accounting for payments to victims. Or accounting for the $400,000 “under payment arrangement”. How much of that is real?
How many victims have been paid out? The press release doesn’t say that. It does say this though-
“The fact is, because of this levy, victims of serious crime are now getting some entitlements and services they have never had.”
So how come there was no detail on this aspect ? The criteria for payment is there, but it would have been nice to know how many people have benefited from the eight entitlements listed. And compare that expenditure to the intake.
Bottom line- if you can only collect the levy in 55% of the cases where it is due, then forget it. Hopeless.
TrueblueNZ 
2 responses to “Simon Power Glosses Over Utter Failure of Offender Levy Scheme”
And the main problem is of course that the majority of offenders ever come from the same pool, who typically have a raft of outstanding fines and a record of all sorts of minor infringements, while at the same time highly likely being in some other financial relationship with the state, as a beneficiary. A large proportion of those live in self-inflicted semi-poverty, while being extorted by all and sundry, from slum landlords to occasional short term employers and the state itself. A large and largely hidden underclass. Failed in the education system, little job prospects or hope for the future, caught in a vicious circle of bad food, self-medication on tobacco, booze and recreational drugs, and all the attendant petty crime and direct liability offences. Procreation as income source, ever ongoing rifts and disputes with family, relatives, neighbors and (of course) the state in all its manifestations, from CYFS to WINZ to police to probations, the courts, the health system, and of course all the unintended consequences of just about everything else the state does, from minimum wages to making it virtually impossible to create your own work.
The whole silly idea of levying an additional fine is lipstick on a pig, a bow and ribbon covering a stinking and puss emanating sore. Without addressing the larger issue all these band aids are just that. It’s high time the state gets out of the way.
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“The whole silly idea of levying an additional fine is lipstick on a pig, a bow and ribbon covering a stinking and puss emanating sore.”
Yeah well, that’s what government is all about these days. Power and his ilk are never going to admit that they’re the problem not the solution.
Funny thing is, Annette King described the plan as a ‘bizarre piece of gimmickry’ and ‘a laughable hoax’
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