Fines play a vital role in providing an incentive to discourage behaviour that negatively affects our community’s safety and wellbeing. This report looks at some possible options for reform in Victoria.

Very little is known about the efficient collection of fines, despite their indispensable contribution to local government budgets. This paper fills a gap in the literature by studying the effectiveness of deterrence (enforcement) and non-deterrence (social norms) letters that aim to improve the collection of...

This investigation raises some fundamental issues about accountability and transparency. At least five councils outsourced internal reviews of parking fines to a private contractor over a period of 10 years.

In 2018, the Ombudsman received 605 complaints about Fines Victoria. This report looks at the emerging themes from these complaints and the efforts of Fines Victoria to address them.

This report concerns a complaint about Maribyrnong City Council’s unfair internal review processes when dealing with fines.

This research used population-level data from the Legal Australia-Wide (LAW) Survey to examine whether the prevalence of problems with fines is higher for disadvantaged groups than others. It also investigated whether people’s responses to fines problems, and the outcomes they achieve for these problems, varies...

The objective of this audit was to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of public sector entities in finalising unpaid fines.

Aim: To determine whether the fine amount, the fine detection mode and the socioeconomic status of the offender influence the willingness to pay a fine. Method: Adults from NSW were surveyed about their experience with traffic fines and willingness to pay fines. 71 per cent...

A poorly targeted and disproportionate public transport fare enforcement system unfairly punishes many travellers in an attempt to snare a small number of recidivist evaders, according to an investigation by the Victorian Ombudsman, Deborah Glass. Tabling an Investigation into public transport fare evasion enforcement Ms...

This working paper is the first published output of an eighteen month (December 2014 – June 2016) research project conducted by staff at the Melbourne Law School that examines enforcement and penalties regimes under legislation administered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). During...

The current system for imposition and collection of fines in Australia is significantly flawed. Fines are often inappropriately imposed/not imposed, inequitable, have high default rates and are expensive to enforce. This paper suggests an alternative scheme for the enforcement and collection of fines, a Fine...