Bail (Electronic Monitoring) Amendment Bill
Some people charged with crimes are allowed to wait for their court case at home instead of in prison, but they have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet and stay at their home address. This bill makes clearer rules about when those people can leave home for things like doctor's appointments or meetings with their lawyer. It lets trained monitoring staff (not just a judge) approve these trips away from home, as long as the court has already said what the trips are for. It also confirms that past approvals done this way were legal.
What this affects
Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it — with the parts of the text it’s based on.
The bill sets clearer rules about when people on home detention with an ankle bracelet can leave their home address, and who can approve those trips
the court must also specify all details of an authorisation, or enable an EM assessor to approve, in the EM assessor's discretion, the defendant to be absent from the EM address in line with an authorisation's specified purpose or purposes
The following must be taken to have been valid from when they occurred: an authorisation to which this clause applies: the related court enablement of an approver.
The authorisation is ended at the start of the 61st working day after commencement, but the related EM condition is not otherwise affected.
Progress through Parliament
Have your say
Submissions open once a bill reaches the select committee stage. In the meantime, you can write to your local MP about it.
Write to your MPBill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.