Putting drivers on the straight and narrow
A District Court judge hopes a new programme will help to cut the number of recidivist driving offenders appearing in southern courts.
Judge Mark Callaghan said it was commonplace to see multiple driving offences come up at courts in Southland every week, with about half being those of repeat offenders.
Judge Callaghan said in his 30 years’ experience of the court system, he had seen driving offenders often falling into a cycle of offending.
‘‘What we’re hoping is that we can get the 15 or 20 people who have done the programme, who can then have a flow-on effect to their [social circle]. All the reports are that people who graduate from the programme, never appear in court again.’’
Both the Gore District Court and Queenstown District Court will be involved in the scheme, as well as Invercargill District Court.
Te Ara Tutuki Pai/The Right Track is an eight-week programme that aims to rehabilitate repeat driving offenders. It has a 90 per cent success rate in the North Island.
More than 120 sessions have been run since it was first set up in 2007, and is currently available in in Auckland, Waikato, and Northland. Funding for two programmes, to run in September/ October and February/March next year, have been secured with help from the Invercargill Licensing Trust and the Community Trust of Southland, and with support from private donors.
EDUK8 Charitable Trust director and founder of the programme John Finch said since it had been implemented, there had been a dramatic reduction in the level of reoffending by participants.
‘‘There’s been a 93 per cent drop off in offending of people who’ve attended the programmes in the Waikato.
‘‘It has an impact on all offending, not just driving, it makes people look at their choices in a different way, and has application to all points of their lives.’’
Finch said the course was targeted to drivers in the 15-25-year range, although it was open to any- one who had problems driving-related offences.
‘‘The people who take part are experiential learners, high risktakers who learn by doing – so a lot of the stuff we do is practically based. We don’t want people coming as a punishment. It’s a huge privilege for people to come because it can change their lives.’’
Participants can be referred to the programme by a range of different means, including Alternative Action Plans, police diversion, through the courts or by selfreferral. The initiative to seek funding from the programme came from Southland trauma nurse coordinator Rebecca Coats, who initially heard about the programme at a conference in Melbourne last year.
After contacting Finch in April last year, the plans to set up the programme and recruit funders were developed throughout the rest of the year.
Coats said the programme gave the opportunity to confront driving issues before they developed into something worse.
‘‘We’re used to having the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, this is about being more proactive than reactive.’’
A range of different organisations have been involved with establishing and running the Southland Right Track Party, including representatives from New Zealand Police, Southland joint councils, the Ministry of Justice, Southern District Health Board, Department of Corrections, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and MacDonald and Weston Funeral Home. with