One in four criminals sentenced to home detention for their crimes in Northland are breaching their conditions, new figures show.
The disclosure has incited a victim’s rights campaigner to appeal to the Government in order to revert to an older system in which home detention only applied to minor offences.
The figures gathered by the Northern Advocate under the Official Information Act showed that in June 2011, almost 26 percent of offenders sentenced by Northland courts breached their home detention sentences. In exact figures, 936 out of the 3613 offenders broke the rules.
That figure differed from the 23 percent breaches from home detention sentences imposed in 2010. However, the number of breaches in 2010 and 2011 were greatly lower than the figure in 2009 which saw a percentage of 35 percent or 92 out of the 257 home detention sentences.
But then again, the number of home detention sentenced imposed in the year 2009 was really lower than those in the following years.
Criminals who face jail sentences of two years or less are the only ones considered for home detection.
The Department of Corrections would not supply information on the specific nature of breaches for both years.
However, common reasons for breaches include leaving the address without approval, consuming alcohol, and failure to attend rehabilitative programmes.
