Privacy Commissioner - Te Mana Matapono Matatapu

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INZ/Justice Fines Defaulters Tracing Programme

• Annual Report
• Technical information
• System description
• Historical activity

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 personal profile 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). 

2008/09 activity:

Records sent to INZ	1,820
Notices of adverse action	747
Successful challenges	0
Payment received for fines	$625,134
Amounts under a current time-to-pay arrangement	$787,652
Rejitalls/alternative sentence imposed	$258,308

Compliance: Compliant.

Technical information

Information matching provision	Immigration Act 1987, s.141AE
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].

Justice is provided with silent alert notifications from Customs on a daily basis by encrypted online transmission. Justice extracts from these notifications the following information about individuals and sends a weekly online (SEEMail) batch transfer to INZ:

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 and provides Justice with the following information[2]:

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

Justice manually checks each individual's profile to ensure that no action has occurred since the silent alert trigger was activated. Where no action has occurred and the address received from INZ is new and not the same as one already held, a notice of adverse action (s.103 notice) is sent to the New Zealand address supplied. If no challenge is received in response to the notice, the 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 19/09/06 - 30/06/2008

	2006/07	2007/08
Silent alerts triggered	1,321	1,554
Individuals subject to silent alerts	986	1,146
Requests sent to INZ	1,382	1,512
Notices of adverse action	706	598
Successful challenges	15	5

 

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[1] For an explanation of how silent alert information is generated, see the system description for the Customs/Justice Fines Defaulters Programme.
[2] Obtaining these details enables Justice to avoid expending resource chasing defaulters who are actually 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.