Delays in hearings coming to court are getting longer and longer. the average waits for a case to come to trial have jumped, thye worst case being Palmerston North where the average wait for a case to appear in the High Court has lengthened to 248 days, with one case taking 557 days to come to trial.

This is getting horrendous with pain and suffering for both the accused and the victims, and even the victims families and friends. I personally know of a case that the eventual wait is going to be close to 800days for a case to get to the Wellington High Court for trial...this is completely disgraceful in a Murder case.

My biggest problem with these waiting times is that if the police have got the wrong person accused of the crime and they get to the trial and are found not guilty then by the time it gets there all of a sudden the police are nearly 2 years behind in trying to use the evidence to find the right person who has had all this time to get away. Something seriously needs to be done about this and soon. Whether it means investing more money in the court system to get cases through quicker or more money into the police force to catch people quicker or more money into the corrections system to get more people in there.

Actually NO...i have the solution: Harsher Sentences these have been the solution all along. If you give out harsher sentences then you don't have so many repeat offenders as they are not out onto the streets so often, you don't get as many first time offenders as they are scared away by the length of sentence they will get and thirdly the courts won't then have as many cases to work through...Problem Solved

All this works simply because all humans are Rationalising Cost/Benefit Creatures at heart, when a person commits a crime they are weighing up the benefits against the possible costs and currently it seems that the benefits well and truly outweigh the costs, so its simple increase the costs and then you will have less crime.