Fall of a gold-rush petition system

THE demise of the petition system has been like witnessing what happened when the gold rush stopped in the Klondike.

Twelve years ago, an astonishing 5,000 petitions annually were being made to the Minister for Justice asking for penalties imposed by district courts to be reduced or mitigated or postponed.

Most of them succeeded. Even if they didn’t succeed, the fact that a petition had been made pushed back the D-Day for paying the fine. In some cases, they were pushed back for so many months and years, that they lapsed.