Third striker not just a bottom pincher

17th June 2018

Raven Campbell, the first third striker under the “three strikes” regime, has been highlighted in a piece in the left wing blog “The Spinoff”, and portrayed as a poor harmless lad who had “groped” a female prison officer, and got seven years for it. The reality is somewhat different.

“Firstly, the offence was no pat on the bum, or even a momentary pinch” says Sensible Sentencing Trust three strikes spokesman David Garrett.

“I have the sentencing notes, and they make it clear it was much more than that. Campbell grabbed a female officer’s buttock and ‘squeezed it quite hard and held on for 1-2 seconds. [he was] told to go the guard room but [he] did not make any attempt to move….the corrections officer was not injured but she suffered stress and had time off work.’ Hardly a pat on the bum in a bar”

“It is unarguable that this was an offence at the lower end of the spectrum of behavior that can support a charge of indecent assault. But the fact that it was committed in a prison when Campbell was already on his second strike makes the offence very serious. If he is prepared to indecently assault a prison officer, what will he do when he is back in the community? I don’t want the bastard anywhere near my daughter, that’s for sure” Garrett said.

“And of course no journalist or left wing blog highlights the fact that Campbell almost certainly won’t serve seven years – he is eligible for parole after two years and four months, and if he behaves himself in jail, he will be out shortly after he becomes eligible for parole. And if he doesn’t behave in jail, and ends up serving the whole seven, that will be entirely because of his poor choices and lack of control” said Garrett

“In these ridiculing pieces we generally don’t hear anything about the subject’s prior strike history. In Campbell’s case, his first strike offence was a robbery for which he wasn’t even sent to jail. Clearly the ‘intensive supervision’ he was sentenced to didn’t work, because just on a year later Campbell committed an aggravated robbery, his second strike, for which he was serving a sentence of three years and four months in prison when he assaulted the Corrections Officer and earned his third strike.”

“Raven Campbell is where he is because of the choices he alone made, and because he can’t control himself. At his third strike sentencing the Judge made it clear that there was no suggestion Campbell hadn’t understood the previous two judicial warnings he had received. I have no problem with the ‘manifestly unjust’ proviso being applied in this case. What happens now is entirely up to Raven Campbell. I sincerely hope his third strike conviction is his last. If it is not, he will go back to jail for a very long time, and that is just as it should be.” ENDS

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/14-06-2018/a-brief-history-of-new-zealands-most-absurd-three-strikes-cases/

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