Three Strikes working well

26 October 2015

A recent media article on “three strikes” (3S) took the unusual approach of interviewing former ACT party candidates in an attempt to find critics of it, and thereby try to denigrate the law. In the process, the writer missed the point on several levels.

“The primary purpose of 3S is and always was to protect the public from recidivist violent offenders. We hoped it would also act as a specific or general deterrent, but that was never its primary purpose” said Sensible Sentencing spokesman David Garrett.

“The 96 second strikers are all very dangerous men and women, and all are serving much longer sentences because of 3S than they otherwise would have. The longest second strike sentence thus far is 12 years nine months imposed on one Hugh Hemi Tareha for sexually assaulting not one but two elderly women in their own homes on the same day. Because of 3S, elderly women are safe from his predations for almost 13 years, rather than the five years or so he would have served before being paroled but for 3S” Garrett said.

“Many of the second strikers committed their second strike offence while on bail awaiting sentence for their first. Such offenders have so little self-control that they cannot even stop offending while awaiting sentence. Clearly any sort of community sentence is out of the question. Can anyone seriously argue that such offenders should not be in prison?”

“But if we want to talk about deterrence there is good news there also, and we now have persuasive evidence that 3S is acting as a specific deterrent” Garrett said.

“In the five year period since 3S was introduced, 81 offenders committed a second strike offence. In the corresponding period before June 2010, there were 256 convictions of those who would have been second strikers had the law come into force in June 2005” said Garrett.

“In other words, in the five year period prior to 3S, more than three times as many first strike offenders went on to commit a second strike offence than in the five years after 3S. That is a very significant drop, and I know of nothing else which happened around June 2010 to explain it” Garrett said

“Those figures are not from some biased study carried out by a supporter of 3S, they are government figures obtained under the Official Information Act. They are so convincing that several academics and lawyers who are opposed in principle to 3S are now saying it is pointless to argue that the law is not having a deterrent effect, with one – Auckland University statistician Thomas Lumley – saying

‘…unless we have testable alternative explanations for the large … decrease, we should be looking at arguments that the law is wrong in principle, not that it’s ineffective’

“There is no doubt 3S is locking up dangerous repeat offenders for longer, thus protecting the public from them. When even opponents of the law grudgingly admit that it is also acting as a specific deterrent, it’s pretty much all over for those who claim the contrary” said Garrett.

ENDS

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