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307A: Threats of harm to people or property
or “You could get in trouble for saying or writing things that might scare people or cause big problems in New Zealand.”

You could also call this:

“Breaking or threatening someone's home, or scaring people inside, is against the law.”

If you try to scare or bother someone by damaging their home or acting in a threatening way, you can get in trouble with the law. This is what the law says:

You might have to go to prison for up to 3 years if you do any of these things to try to frighten or annoy someone:

You break or damage a house where people live, or you say you will do this.

You act in a scary way that makes someone in their home feel afraid or worried, or you try to make them feel this way.

These rules are there to help keep people safe and comfortable in their own homes.

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Next up: 308A: Discharging firearm to intimidate

or “It's against the law to fire a gun to scare people, and you could go to jail for up to 5 years if you do this.”

Part 11 Threatening, conspiring, and attempting to commit offences

308Threatening acts in relation to dwellinghouses and persons in dwellinghouses

  1. Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years who, with intent to intimidate or annoy any person,—

  2. breaks or damages or threatens to break or damage any dwellinghouse; or
    1. by threatening behaviour, alarms or attempts to alarm any person in a dwellinghouse.
      Compare
      • 1908 No 32 ss 344, 345
      Notes
      • Section 308 heading: replaced, on , by section 4(1) of the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act 2023 (2023 No 7).
      • Section 308(b): replaced, on , by section 4(2) of the Criminal Activity Intervention Legislation Act 2023 (2023 No 7).