More than $4 million of the fines were converted to 148,000 hours of community work, meaning fines defaulters effectively worked off their debts at an average rate of about $30 an hour net.
That was a wage most people would love to earn, Garth McVicar, of Sensible Sentencing New Zealand, said.
"That's a pretty good hourly rate to go out and commit crime, isn't it?"
Community work was a soft option which allowed fines defaulters, mostly young male drivers, to almost escape the consequences of their actions, Mr McVicar said.
It was time the justice system included stronger penalties for minor crimes, in order to deter people from committing worse ones.
"Community work is nothing to be afraid of. It's so easy, some people want that instead of having to pay and, when the consequences of your crimes are zilch, people think they can go out and commit more crimes.
"Ultimately, the whole community pays the price, in freedom and in security."
Ways to deter people from amassing fines would include jail terms, making families pay for their children's fines or, in the case of young offenders, giving them a small taste of harsher penalties - for example, a week in jail - to try to make them understand the consequences of breaking the law.
"We've got to get hard on the little things. Already we've let them go, and they've escalated to where we now have violent crime out of control."
He agreed with Prisoners Aid Otago president Fiona Ross that replacing outstanding fines with extra time in prison at the sentencing of people going to jail on other matters was a sensible move.
Ms Ross said prisoners deserved a fresh start after serving their time and could not do that if they had fines hanging around their necks "like a noose". Community work was not a sentence that suited everybody, or everybody's understanding of what was a punishment, but the judiciary was restricted in its sentencing options.
"I think people just look at fines as another tax and just accept that they will get them and they will have to pay them, one way or another."
Following a re-view of the infringement system in New Zealand, the Government this week announced a raft of proposals designed to deter people from collecting fines, including a threshold above which people would automatically be referred to court.
People aged more than 21 would be automatically sent to court if they had received six or more fines in a 12-month period, owed fines and/or reparation of $5000 or more, had not made any payments in the past three months, and had not had any fines remitted or substitute sentences imposed within the past 12 months.
Courts Minister Rick Barker said departmental infringement systems, such as that run by the police, would be improved so there could be better oversight of mounting fines to prevent situations in which infringe-ments continued to be handed out without any knowledge of earlier fines incurred.
"Currently, people seem to think that fines are soft credit and they put other priorities ahead of getting them resolved. This is what we intend to change," Mr Barker said.
