Cabinet has agreed that people who are wrongly convicted and serve a sentence of home detention should be eligible to apply for compensation.
Until now, the ability to apply for compensation for a wrongful conviction has been limited to cases involving imprisonment.
In some cases, a court can impose a sentence of home detention (for up to a year) as an alternative to imprisonment.
Cabinet has now determined that the loss of liberty through home detention is sufficiently severe that people who are wrongly convicted and sentenced to home detention should also be eligible to apply for compensation. The extension of eligibility will apply back to 2007, when the sentence of home detention was introduced.
As with cases involving imprisonment, applicants will have to establish their innocence on the balance of probabilities.
They will have been pardoned or had their conviction/s quashed and their criminal proceedings must have finished.
Cabinet must also be satisfied that payment of compensation is in the interests of justice.
Compensation rates for home detention will generally be 50% of the rates for imprisonment.
As the Compensation Guidelines also apply to military convictions, the Guidelines have been extended in a similar way to include the military sentence of detention, when it is imposed by the Court Martial of New Zealand.
While there is no legal right to compensation in New Zealand when a person is wrongly convicted and detained, Cabinet may pay compensation at its discretion in accordance with the updated Guidelines.
The revised Compensation Guidelines have been issued by the Minister of Justice and can be found here: Compensation Guidelines for Wrongful Conviction and Detention [PDF, 97 KB]
The Guidelines are kept are kept under regular review, including a review of compensation rates every 5 years.
Compensation Guidelines for Wrongful Conviction and Detention [PDF, 97 KB]
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