More than a quarter of the people summonsed for jury duty in Dunedin do not show up - and there is no punishment for their absence.
New Zealand Law Society Otago branch president Frazer Barton said it was a ''disturbing trend''.
Figures released by the Ministry of Justice to the ODT under the Official Information Act show 11,170 were called up for jury duty in the district court or High Court in Dunedin between mid-2013 and 2016.
Of that number, only 2259 turned up - 20.2%.
A further 2827 had their attendance excused by contacting the ministry with a valid excuse and 3129 were granted a deferral to do their jury duty at a later date.
The shortfall - nearly 3000, or 26.5% of all summonsed - were no-shows.
It puts Dunedin halfway in a list of all courts in the country; well short of the standard-setting Nelson, where unexplained absences accounted for a mere 14.2%.
Least keen to do jury duty appeared to be folk in Wanganui, where a whopping 34.6% of those summonsed did not attend.
Under section 32 of the Juries Act, anyone called up who does not report to court when required can be fined $1000.
But Ministry of Justice group manager of courts and tribunals, regional service delivery, Jacquelyn Shannon confirmed only one person had been penalised in the past three years.
''Fining a person is a judicial decision and is rarely used,'' she said.
Ms Shannon did not explain why that was the case.
Mr Barton said he understood jury duty disrupted most jurors' lives but called it ''an absolutely fundamental plank of our civil society''.
''Rather than people sitting back and complaining about the justice system, this is the opportunity the average person has to have a say,'' Mr Barton said.
''There's a disturbing trend of people not wanting to buy into this. They'd rather sit on the fence and complain about the law, justice, the government or the police.''
He was surprised by Dunedin's poor rate of attendance and struggled for an explanation as to why that was, he said.
''I would've thought Dunedin, being quite a large university-based town, might have a better strike rate than that.''
Dunedin Crown solicitor Robin Bates was also confounded by the area's poor attendance rates.
''It really surprises me, actually, because historically I thought we were actually pretty civic-minded,'' he said.
Despite that, dwindling numbers had never stopped a trial going ahead, he said.
''Most of the time I think Dunedin, as far as juries go ... has a pretty good mix and good jurors,'' Mr Bates said.
Until a decade ago, people would regularly get off jury duty by writing to the ministry, but a crackdown had meant a much better cross section of society was represented on juries nowadays, he said.
Ms Shannon said two ''key changes'' were made to legislation in October 2010 in a bid to improve attendance rates.
District boundaries were extended from a 30km radius of the courthouse to 45km to increase the potential jury pool; and people became able to defer jury service to a more convenient time within a year of the original summons.
The number of no-shows could be explained by summonses being posted to an old address or the recipient being overseas at the time, she said.
-By Rob Kidd
