The offenders’ levy
March 17th, 2011 at 7:00 am by David FarrarSimon Power has announced:
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.
Excellent.
“The Ministry of Justice estimated that $2 million would be collected in the first year, based on the assumption that 42 per cent of offenders would pay up,” Mr Power said.
“In fact, 55 per cent have paid so far.
“That means we met our first-year target on 5 February, as opposed to 1 July, and that’s fantastic news for victims of crime because it means we can put more into services for them.
The payment rate is around one third higher than projected.
Mr Power said reaching the levy target almost five months early shows how misguided the Labour Party leadership was when it slammed the idea.
“When we announced in 2008 our intention to introduce the levy, now-Deputy Leader Annette King said she was ‘astounded’ by the plan, describing it as a ‘bizarre piece of gimmickry’ and ‘a laughable hoax’.
“And when we introduced the levy last year, Labour leader Phil Goff accused us of overestimating the amount we would collect.
For some bizarre reason Labour have opposed this levy which forces convicted criminals to contribute to the costs of victims. And to be absolutely clear Goff said the Government over-estimated the amount it would collect and in fact they under-estimated it.
So you have to wonder, do Labour now support the levy? Sadly, no. Clayton Cosgrove spins:
Labour’s Law and Order spokesperson Clayton Cosgrove says Labour’s prediction is being borne out that National’s $50 levy on every offender will cost more to administer than it will raise to help victims.
“The levy is quite simply a gimmick,” Clayton Cosgrove said. “Since it came into effect in July last year it has raised about $2 million, and it will cost $2.4 million to set up and administer over the first year.
Clayton fails Maths 101. He is comparing one off set-up costs and the full year operational costs with the income of the first seven months.
Setting up the mechanism for the levy cost $1.3m. That is one off.
The collection cost for 2010/11 is $1.1m. And it has collected $2m in just 7 months. If that continues then it will collect $3.4m over the year. So the income will meet the operating cost by around a 3:1 margin. Even if you depreciate the set-up costs over three years, then that is income of $3.4m against expenditure of $1.5m – providing $2/year to help victims.
I’m amazed Labour is still opposing the offenders levy, when the evidence is clearly there that the amount it is gathering in is sufficient to make it worthwhile. Politically very stupid on their part, as it means National can now point to all of the below, which is funded by the levy, and tell people Labour are against them:
- Four paid homicide support co-ordinators to work with Victim Support’s volunteer network.
- An increase in the discretionary grant for families of homicide victims, from $1,500 to $5,000.
- A court service for victims of sexual violence which will give them access to a trained adviser who understands the dynamics of sexual violence cases and victims’ needs.
- A grant of $500 towards the expenses incurred as a result of sexual violence, such as replacing items of clothing collected for forensic evidence.
- Increases in travel, accommodation and childcare assistance for victims attending court proceedings (from $1,000 to $3,000), and Parole Board hearings (from $500 to $1,500).
- A High Court attendance grant of $124 per person per day for up to five adult members of a homicide victim’s family.
- A funeral grant of up to $4,458.77 to families of homicide victims, on top of the $5,541.23 available through ACC (up to $10,000 in total).
This will be a great question at electorate meet the candidate meetings. Why does Labour oppose convicted crimnals paying a $50 levy to help fund victim support services?
Related posts:
- Dom Post on crime levy
- Anderton’s Dental Levy
- Fund newspapers from a broadband levy!
- 10c petrol levy in Auckland
March 17th, 2011 at 7:13 am
Be fair, Labour are just looking after one of their core constituencies.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 7:52 am
It’s a great idea.
Up it to $100 at least.
How could Labour possibly oppose it?
I could understand maybe the Greens and the Maori party.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 7:54 am
Duncan Garner needs to put that question direct to fool goof and then play the tape on 3 news at 6pm for all to see the answer.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:20 am
Duncan Garner needs to get a job suited to his talents starboard.
Cleaning toilets for example. We have no real journalists in this country. If they’re good at their jobs they work in other countries.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:24 am
@ Murray – or get fired for not being PC enough, ie., too human, too real.
NZ journos seem to thrive on the bs sensational approach.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:24 am
It does seeem ridiculous in the extreme that Labour would oppose such a common-sense bill.
And Murray, you are insulting all toilet cleaners there :-p .
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:26 am
I wonder how that ratio compares to the cost of collecting income tax (especially when added to the cost of paying back out working for families to the same people)? If it’s higher then why is it so inefficient, and if it’s the same or lower then why do we have such an inefficient mechanism for collecting government monies?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:28 am
That is, the pretentious bs sensational approach.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:28 am
@Murray – Whenever I see Duncan Garner on TV I am reminded of that character in the Harry Potter movies played by Timothy Spall – you know the half rat half man Peter Pettigrew.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:34 am
@ matt from memory the cost of collecting tax (as in IRD cost, not deadweight cost on economy which is materially higher) is around 2%. They arent comparable because a lot of the collection cost (eg PAYe and GST) is borne by the employer/retailer and the amounts involved are much higher. Collecting $50 a time off (frequently) indigent criminals is always going to be costly.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:35 am
DPF: I am surprised that YOU are surprised at Cosgrove’s attitude…among many other things, he is old style Labour: anything “the tories” propose must be opposed. A sad little man who still hasnt accepted that Labour lost the last election.
On the levy itself, I proposed an amendment under which the levy had to be paid before those convicted of an offence – but not sent to prison – could leave the court cells. It was rejected, largely I think because I came up with the idea too late in the piece for Power to put it before the Nats’ caucus..although he managed to write a few amendments at Committee stage himself without the imprimatur of caucus when the need arose.
Had they adopted that amendment the compliance rate would have been more like 80%.
KiwiGreg: have you noticed how “indigent criminals” seem always to have money for tattoos and smokes? Two packets of rollie tobacco is about $50 now I believe…
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:37 am
@Murray
And after 5 years on the job he gets a brush!
(Shamelessly plaguerized from Monty Python)
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:38 am
Can you get an emergency welfare grant to pay fines?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:40 am
Fair enough, a $50 levy on common criminals-Labour voters, how about a $5,000 levy on the white collar criminal-National voters?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:45 am
Am I the only one turning off when the Labour crowd pop up to oppose everything?
Vote:Just look at Phil’s dismal performance over the RWC decision.
What’s the betting he’ll be desperate for a photo with Prince William?
Perhaps he’ll dye his hair again now that cheap job has washed out.
March 17th, 2011 at 8:46 am
Yes – petty politics by Labour – chulishness because they didn’t think of it and because it doesnt have the grand sweep of a big new programme announced with a fanfare complete with its own bureaucracy and funding. This is a pragmatic measure that was I’d imagine a test to see what might be achieved and now that it has proven successful, things can be done to tweak it, improve it and keep doing good things in the background. The concept is so simple and it rings a reasonant chord with an electorate fed up with the inexorable reach of crime and the politically correct accomodation of crime and criminals by the so-called talking head experts in the field (who Labour of course exclusively listen to for more discredited ideas on reducing crime). An own goal by Clayton Cosgrove who, in my experience, is normally pretty savvy politically. I’m sure his mentor Mike Moore would enjoy this initiative and think Cosgrove was being a dick opposing it.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:47 am
@ Garrett, an ACT man proposing bill amendments to enforce a tax, how refreshing.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:51 am
William Blake: User pays old boy…pure ACT philosophy…an eft-pos terminal in every courtroom…
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 8:56 am
@BeaB Am I the only one turning off when the Labour crowd pop up to oppose everything?
Hell no; Goff and the opposition are so poor in opposition they are just regarded as a Nat party rubber stamp, the usual opposing comment is silence. However an increasing number of the National crowd are turning off to their own party as well for various policies that they were not elected to enact.
I see more fractionating of the vote at the next election a big swing to Green from Labour and someone must be building a party to the right of National. Well at least until we have the MMP referendum and we go back to the good old simplistic two party system.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:05 am
@David Garrett; user pays used to go with ‘the customer is always right’ and ‘cash is king’ (the good old days). but the crim isn’t a customer and is by definition is in the wrong, so a levy by any other name is just a tax. Unless of course you are suggesting some other mechanism where the wealthier crim can purchase services from the justice department?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:20 am
Great. As long as it’s the offender paying for this, not WINZ.
I can just imagine at the dole office, in their shaky, drug-addled voice “I need some money to pay my offenders levy. I don’t have enough.”
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:27 am
Labour MPs are the star turns when it comes to rendering a PhD performance in impracticality or sheer idiocy.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:29 am
Sometimes its not hard to see how stereotypes get established…I was working at home yesterday and had to go into the nearest town for some printer paper…the guy next to me at the stationery shop was wearing the “uniform” of the yoof, heavily tattooed, with his cap on backwards..he was buying several “scratchies”…didn’t take much notice of him. As it happened he and his mates were sitting at a cafe next to my car when I returned to it…all tattooed, all smoking (only one playing the scratchies)…all apparently able bodied…I know for a fact that labour is desparately needed around here right now given the last frenzy of haymaking and other rural activities that need doing before winter sets in…is the local WINZ office not aware of that fact? You dont even need a drivers licence to pick up hay…
oops…that was supposed to be in GD…dont have the skills to shift it and cant be bother re-typing….
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:46 am
This leftie is a big fan of Mr Garrett’s law & order stance… just sayin’!
As per tristanb and Kiwigreg comments above though, I wonder if (or how often) you and I via Winz come to the party rendering the whole thing an exercise in churn / chest-beating?
Because we all know ‘churn’ is a mainstay of DPF’s opposition to most state activities the left wants to run!
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:48 am
@ David Garret,
There’s this awesome new function called “copy and paste”. It saves you having to re-type. Read up on it.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 9:48 am
KiwiGreg – I do not know if one can get a welfare grant to pay fines. I do not think that Collections officials can require MSD to pay over benefits – it is not lawful for anyone (eg loan sharks, debt collectors etc) to put a ‘hold’ on benefit payments even if the beneficiary agrees. It would be quite feasible for the Government to require MSD to make an advance to cover the $50 and part of the fine, and to then ‘establish an overpayment’ (using MSD jargon) so $10 – $20 a week (or so) may be deducted to repay it. This is what happens when MSD makes an advance or tries to recover money after a benefit fraud.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 10:10 am
1. $50 not enough. Civil litigation requires a payment in respect of court costs and why should the crims be treated any differently. The fine/sentence is an entirely different issue. Criminal offending is a dead weight cost; a free ride on the justice system at the taxpayers’ expense. Sell their cars, bongs and underpants if they haven’t got the cash.
2. Why do we tolerate 45% non-payment and for that matter, why do we continue to tolerate non-payment of fines generally? Take away their driving licenses – irrespective of whether the offence is driving-related.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Its a start, but it needs to keep rising until they are covering the total cost of their crimes, and yes i suspect that means that white collar criminals will get hit with a much higher levy. otoh if another labour support murders someone, the loss to the family is the lost years of income etc, so it may not be white collar who pays the most after all.
its not a tax, its reparation to the victims for their loss.
considering it a tax is an insult to the people whos property or person the criminal has damaged.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 10:21 am
55% collection. Clearly the rules are far to lax. David Garret is right, no pay no go, night in cells and no food as nothing to buy it with. All sounds good to me the taxpayer. Don’t want to pay $50 don’t get arrested for anything criminal.
I see that Mrs Fletcher is winging about Power’s new proposed court rules. Too bad how sad.
She has had more than enough time in the top trough to do something constructive for the tax payer instead the the legal society. Perhaps its time she retired along with the rest of the lefties. Her job to enforce the rules not make them.
I also see the new Tinkerbell Law is going thru despite considerable reservations by all but the Nats and Maori Party.
I trust that you will all remember this at voting time. It reinforces what I have always thought about the Nat. blue rinse sect. Most of them are light weight when it comes to thinking.
Tinkerbell Findlayson is the National Party’s David Lange.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 10:24 am
He could also be its undertaker come election time.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 11:27 am
The collection rate is much better than I anticipated…The main value of the levy lies in the psychological effect of favouring the perpetrator over the victim, a reversal of the Labour policy and a slight evening of the scales of Justice. Well done Minister Power I hope your successor continues in the same vein.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 11:28 am
How much effort is being made to chase down those 45% who haven’t paid? And where will THOSE costs appear?
No doubt in the Justice Dept budget under a general heading of Collection Costs, lumped in with all the other costs of collection.
In other words we will never know the true cost of this levy. Neither will the Government.
And these people are supposed to be smart businessmen?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 11:37 am
Court fines and these levies need to be able to be passed on to debt collection agencies. It’s absurd that someone can owe thousands of dollars in fines but still potentially have an unblemished credit rating.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 12:30 pm
@Grendel; “considering it a tax is an insult to the people whos property or person the criminal has damaged.”
Reperation is a different issue and I have no problem with matching like for like for crimes of property, if the crim has stolen and wrecked your car, well they should replace it. However crimes against the person can only be charged in relation to medical costs, and ACC is there for that, the $50 fee for mental distress, after being mugged, is the real insult. As for the monetary value on a human life…
As an aside it may be worthwhile considering the average crim in jail, low I.Q. if not I.H., mental health issues, drug addiction, alcoholic and all of the rest. They may not get much sympathy from society but they do deserve some simple human compassion.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
That’s marvellous, but compare it to what the jury, with a far more important role in the process, get:
- $31 a day rising to $40 on the sixth and subsequent days
- $89 and $114 respectively if they are required after 6pm but up till 9 pm
- $127 and $163 respectively if they “work” after 9pm
Note that those aren’t cumulative, they’re alternative, So to be paid as much as a victim’s family member a juror would need to show up in the morning and stay till after 9pm. Every day.
That’s pathetic. No wonder we’ve had some ridiculous jury verdicts of late – who wouldn’t try to get out of something that pays $3.87 an hour (assuming an 8 hour day).
While I have the greatest of sympathy for victims’ families surely the effective operation of our courts is at least as important as facilitating their presence at the trial?
Ought increasing payments to jurors not have been the first use to which the levy was put, with anything else a welcome bonus? Instead. we pay victim’s families to witness a process which is all too often – thanks to a poor jury pool – a farce.
National and Act – starting at the wrong end of the equation. Again.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Viking2 says:
Thankfully, even Garrett and Power didn’t go that far. The payment falls due on conviction, not arrest, so at least I didn’t starve – considering I was dragged out of bed in my pyjamas and the contents of my wallet seized as “evidence”, so I had no way of paying and, even if I’d kept cash in my pyjamas, it’s normal (and very wise) practice for police to seize it so you don’t get mugged in lockup.
But, hey, thanks for wishing that additional indignity upon me and everyone else wrongfully arrested.
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 4:56 pm
william blake:
I agree, but the State (and most people here) would rather see the thief locked up with murderers and rapists where he (or she) can learn a few new tricks. If any reparation is ordered, the amount is likely to be barely enough to cover your windscreen wipers… and often it’s not ordered at all because the judge considers the person has no capacity to pay.
If I were king for a day, the system I’d set up would be:
1. State buys you a new car, equivalent to the one you lost (so “new” might mean second hand). The State then recoups its money by:
2. If the thief is working, state garnishes their wages down to the level of the unemployment benefit. If the thief doesn’t showup for work, they do, say, three days jail for each day’s absence.
3. If the thief is unemployed they must report to a government work camp, where their labour is offset against their debt until it is paid in full. They might even learn some skills which gets them a real job when their sentence is done. Again, failure to report results in jail. During this time they retain their welfare benefit.
But hey, that doesn’t involve enough human suffering, so it’s unlikely to find much favour here.
You’ve come to the wrong place, Mr Blake. Compassion is in shorter supply than Green votes round here :-/
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Good call on juror remuneration Rex.
The other reason I always ask to be excused is that the criminal scum can look up my address. What honest purpose could they possibly need that information for?
Vote:March 17th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
RRM, you raise an interesting point. There’s quite a history to the use of anonymous juries in some US states, always for the reason you cite – protecting jurors from intimidation and “payback”.
It seems like a perfectly reasonable move, but unfortunately it stumbles upon human nature: studies show anonymous juries are far more likely to convict than a non-anonymous jury presented with the same evidence. And it has nothing to do with fear of repraisals – the study I’ve linked to was a “jury” who decided whether university students were guilty of selling drugs on campus and whether they should be expelled, not people dealing with gang members and murderers.
Anonymity makes it harder for the links of jurors to the accused to be discovered, too. In the first link I cite, a juror in the Gotti trial was found to have mob links! But only because that jury, despite a very reasonable apprehension of danger to them, wasn’t anonymous and the press were thus able to investigate them.
There’s quite a good scholarly article here for anyone interested in canvassing both sides of this debate.
Vote: