When the average person breaks the law and receives a fine it is usually quickly paid - and forgotten. That same fine can blight the life of the homeless, those with mental illness or an intellectual disability - or those suffering severe economic hardship. There is no statute of limitations when we owe money to the government - and governments are relentless in pursuing those debts.
Often the fine hanging over a person's head is an indiscretion from their teenage years. Perhaps they tried to make a train journey without buying a ticket - or they rode a bicycle without wearing a safety helmet. Once this debt reaches the government agency tasked with recovering money owed a ban is imposed o getting a driver's license or legally registering a motor vehicle in that person's name. In many ways, this reduces the options of getting a job and being able to pay the debt owing.
It is a fact of life that there are people in the community who will never be able to function normally, get a paying job and settle any fines on the government's books. Handing out fines is simply a lost cause that will continue to haunt them indefinitely.
Someone finally did something to ease this situation and created the " Work or Development Order scheme " which allows those in that situation to come to terms with an arrangement that gives something back to the community in exchange for chipping away at any unpaid fines.
There are no hard and fast rules. The basic intention is to ask the debtor to undertake something that will improve their coping ability - such as group counselling or using a latent skill to improve future job prospects. Each time they continue with this plan a proportion of the debt is erased and the aim is to proceed until they are debt free.
It recognises the fact that some debt on the government's books is unrecoverable and it simply wastes the time of the Debt Recovery office in pursuing it. It is a better option to try and improve the lot of the debtor by a positive reduction programme.
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