The cost of breaking home detention

The Herald reports:

Waiariki MP Te Ururoa Flavell has criticised a Rotorua judge for sending a teenager to prison for 12 months for breaching a sentence of home detention.

Last week Judge Phillip Cooper sentenced Mere Ohlson, 17, to jail after she breached her home detention by cutting off her ankle bracelet and leaving the address where she was supposed to be serving her sentence. She was arrested four days later.

Mr Flavell said he was shocked at the sentence and the judge had other options including sentencing the teenager to some form of rehabilitation instead of spending $100,000 of taxpayers’ money to keep her in prison. …

Ohlson was initially sentenced in September to six months’ home detention and 200 hours’ community work for her part in the robbery of Jeram’s Superette in March.

Ohlson went into the store with two others pretending to have a gun and demanding cigarettes and cash from the owner’s son.

I have to disagree with Mr Flavell on this case. Ohlson was effectively given a second chance and an opportunity to rehabilitate by being given home detention. Home detention is 100 times more preferable than prison, yet she threw away that privilege by cutting the braclet off.

It is no surprise that the Judge then had to go to a custodial sentence, after she effectively rejected the easy option of home detention.