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INZ/Justice Fines Defaulters Tracing Programme
Annual Report
Purpose: To enable the Ministry of Justice locate people who have outstanding fines in order to enforce payment.
Year commenced: 2006
Features: Data transferred weekly by online transfer.
Justice disclosure to INZ: Justice sends INZ details of serious fines defaulters who have triggered a 'silent' alert as part of the linked Customs/Justice Fines Defaulters Alerts Programme. Each record includes the full name, date of birth, gender, passport number, Justice unique identifier number and flight information of the fines defaulter.
INZ disclosure to Justice: INZ supplies information contained on the arrival and departure card, which includes full name, date of birth, gender, passport number, nationality, occupation, New Zealand address and date of expected return to New Zealand (in the case of a departing traveller).
2010/11 activity:
| Records sent to INZ | 3,922 |
| Notices of adverse action | 1,276 |
| Successful challenges | 16 |
| Payment received for fines | $585,858 |
| Amounts under a current time to pay arrangement | $396,917 |
| Remittals/Alternative sentence imposed | $613,183 |
Commentary: Justice suggests that the doubling of records sent to INZ this year resulted from a large number of new people becoming eligible for the CoFaA initiative following projects to review fines defaulter profiles.
Justice suggests projects to review fines defaulter profiles are likely to be behind the large increase ($332,229) in remittals/alternative sentences imposed.
Fines payments received increased by about $300,000 this year on a 60% increase in the number of notices of adverse action sent.
Conversely, amounts under a current time-to-pay arrangement have dropped by 35%. Justice advises that it is monitoring this downward trend.
Compliance: Compliant.
Technical information
| Information matching provision | Immigration Act 2009, s.295 |
| Year authorised | 2006 |
| Programme type | Locating people |
| Unique Identifiers | Passport number Personal profile number |
| On-line transfers | Yes |
System description
This programme is linked to the Customs/Justice Fines Defaulters Alerts Programme as silent alert information provided from the Customs/Justice programme is subsequently used by Justice to match with arrival and departure information held by Immigration New Zealand (INZ)[1].
Each day, Customs sends Justice, by encrypted online transfer, silent alert notifications for fines defaulters who have left from or returned to New Zealand. Justice extracts from these notifications the following information about fines defaulters and sends INZ a weekly transfer using an encrypted communication channel:
| Family/Given names | Date of birth | Gender |
| Passport number | Date and time of travel | Flight/vessel number |
| Personal profile number | Direction of travel |
INZ manually extracts the relevant arrival or departure card for each matched individual. Obtaining these details enables Justice to avoid expending resources unnecessarily chasing defaulters who are out of the country, and to be ready to recommence enforcement action promptly on a traveller's return and trace them to their declared address. INZ provides Justice with the following information:
| Family/Given names | Date of birth | Gender |
| Passport number | Nationality | Expiry date of any permit |
| NZ residential address | Expected return date (for eparting travellers) |
Occupation |
If the address received from INZ is new, and no action has occurred on the individual's profile since the silent alert was activated, Justice sends out a notice of adverse action (s.103 notice) to the New Zealand address supplied. If no challenge is received in response to the notice, the individual's profile becomes available for action at the Collections Unit nearest to the recently supplied address.
Historical activity
INZ/Justice Fines Defaulters Tracing Programme: Silent Alert Results
| 2006/07 | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | |
| Requests sent to INZ | 1,382 | 1,512 | 1,820 | 1,939 |
| Notices of adverse action | 706 | 598 | 747 | 784 |
| Successful challenges | 15 | 5 | 0 | 1 |
| Payment received for fines | $176,535 | $418,203 | $625,134 | $285,883 |
| Amounts under a current time to pay arrangement | $275,540 | $174,118 | $787,652 | $616,983 |
| Remittals/Alternative sentence imposed | $39,667 | $110,418 | $258,308 | $280,954 |
[1] For an explanation of how silent alert information is generated, see the system description for the Customs/Justice Fines Defaulters Programme.