The great scholarly Grand Cleric of the libertarian right, Jamie Whyte, has come down from the mount with two stone tablets and sadly all he has is 3 strikes, not 10 commandments…
Jail burglars after third offence, says Act
Party leader Jamie Whyte yesterday outlined a three-strikes policy, under which burglars will spend at least three years in prison if convicted of the crime a third time.The policy is similar to the three-strikes law for violent crime, also an Act policy, which requires judges to sentence offenders who commit a third violent crime to the maximum sentence without parole.
…this tired old tough on crime knee jerk redneck fuckwittery is hardly the peaks of political intellectual purity Professor Jamie Whyte promised now is it? It’s the same tired old jaded crusty foreskin of reactionary anger manipulated for political gain that ACT have always traded in.
Ugly, very ugly.
Seeing as burglary is one of our most common crimes, the only ones truly happy with a 3 strikes, 3 year prison term will be the private prisons who get paid to house this sudden expansion of prison population. All this will lead to is a massive blowout in costs and a jump in our already high incarceration rates.
Attempting to cite the current 4000 first strikes of the existing 3 strikes legislation as proof that a sudden increase in prison numbers won’t happen is insane. The 3 strikes was supposed to be for a small handful of the worst offenders, that we’ve managed to clock up 4000 already suggests those assurances were baseless and that the structure and wide ranging sentences that can be included in that were far too broad to begin with.
This ‘policy’ (and I’m using that word as broadly as I possibly can) is more about values. If you think that your property is akin to a divine gift from the Market God, you’ll see incarceration as a righteous response for daring to touch it. If you aren’t a selfish neurotic who needlessly drives a 4×4 SUV in leafy suburbs you’ll see this for the dog whistle that it is.
If this petty bullshit is the best Jamie Whyte has as ACT policy, he should stick to legalising incest.
Just listened to John Key saying he would not rule this out. He is also “lauding” the fact that crime is at an all time low. Hmmm
So many questions, so few clues.
Does the 3 strikes apply to incest as well?
If there’s a grand coalition between National ACT and Colin Craig, will the US go to jail for pretending to go to the moon more than 3 times?
And is it just crimes beginning with “bu”, or will Colin Craig have a say in this?
For a crime against the nation, of selling 49% of more than three assets, will ACT send National to jail?
Will retrospective crime of selling assets in the 80’s land ACT’s Prebble in jail?
Which croney capitalists will be issued with “Get out of jail free cards”?
Thanks for this article and DLANZ has seen this on television over in the United States of America, where issues of immigration and marihuana laws of incarceration are being influenced by the same industry.
Disabled are aware that profit driven motives like this shows lack of vision or conscience, get sick of people defining those with intellectual disabilities as ‘Retard”…as its term refers or infers a backward or regressive step…Which is false and that word should be returned to those like this ‘Act’ of retardation.
Act and its allies should get their own ‘act’ together and visit a prison.
Regards
Doug Hay
DLANZ Cordinator
“Act and its allies should get their own ‘act’ together and visit a prison”
One of Act’s leading lights, just might be doing this in the near future.
What has the penalty for committing Burglary got to do with Immigration or drugs?
Because so many burglars are druggies!
Do you have the numbers on that?
As an add on Bomber….iToo many Maori in Prison…no voting rights…is this Act Institutional Racism / Discrimination??
No, it’s just evidence that proportionately Maori commit more crimes.
But don’t forget the majority of those “Maori” in prison are also part “Pakeha”, there are few full Maori left in Aotearoa.
True enough. It’s all in how they identify themselves.
Do you disagree that the crime statistics suggest most crime is lower than it has been for decades?
Jamie Whyte desperately trying to get some (any) media attention. The ususual far right attempts to make them look strong and committed to “ordinary” New Zealanders. I’m surprised he didn’t suggest bringing back capital punishment or flogging, but perhaps he is saving this for later in case he doesn’t get enough attention now. “The New Statesman” he he he.
If being a “New Statesman” involves “knee jerk redneck fuckwittery” and “brain farts” and ‘honest personal opinions on incest between family members’ then Mr Whyte is probably overly qualified right now.
Watch a few episodes of the Real New Statesman, Alan Beresford B’Stard eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFHgtaz89KQ
to make sure that jolly good brainy nice people like Mr Whyte don’t get dragged into populist right-wing vote-grabbing gob-shite.
A jolly good laugh, ‘I don’t know’; ‘I can’t remember’; ‘you’ll have to ask my partner about that’ ‘well the reality is that the opposition will be even worse than me/us’; ‘we’ll probably discuss that with our coalition partners after the election’, probably suffices as policy for the next 150 days Jamie.
Given their soul mates in the National Party legalised analogue controlled drugs, you know the ones that as each day goes on are worse than the real thing and are now legal. There are some seriously wealthy “legalised” drug dealers out there now.
Lock away the burglars for years who are getting cash for legal highs, absolutely priceless. How can anyone take ACT seriously!
And yes I do question our crime stats. What they don’t tell us is how many people are not being charged with criminal offences that should be because the police are not looking all that hard as a result of not having the resources or are warning crooks instead for the same reasons. They may be still responding to calls for help but are not proactively looking for criminals when the emergency button hasn’t been pushed! That alone would drive any official crime stats down a long way and very quickly.
And the above really makes a mockery of getting tough on crime.
I’d suggest you don’t understand the crime statistics if you think that.
However you may well be right. If you were right why do you think that not one Opposition party, not even the Mana party, are raising this as a major issue?
If the statistics are being cooked as much as you think they are then this is a scandal that should at least bring down onw or two scalps in the current government. However the Opposition is strangely silent on this point. Why do you think that is?
Stats are what you want them to be. If for example you legalised cannabis and meth, or made bank fraud a civil offence between a private business and their users or raised the alcohol limit for driving there would be a huge reduction in crime stats but has the problem gone away, no!
I really don’t think the opposition in any party at this time know what they are looking at or how the police work. I dont know if its the particular spokesman’s ability to do their job or their research unit is poor or they just don’t understand their portfolios.
To me any portfolio requires that shadow minister/s to almost live that occupations it covers (or previously be experienced at it) to really get a true understanding by the time they become that minister (if ever). I have no issues with associate ministers who are in the know in areas of those super ministries dealing with areas the overall minister could not understand. Trying to wing it will only lead to problems.
What you are essentially stating is that the members of the Opposition parties who are spokepersons on Police and Justice issues are incompetent boobs and therefore by extension so too are the people who allocated them their roles, I will have to agree with you on that point.
The only one happy with ACTs new ’3 strikes’ for burglary will be private prisons
Well, them and anyone who’s ever been burgled, which is a lot of us.
Actually, the policy looks like it’s got no shortage of potential unintended consequences, but the idea that burglary is a crime that warrants a jail term isn’t exactly controversial or in any sense right-wing.
I’ve been burgled a few times. I am not happy with ACT’s latest brain fart.
When I first saw this in the Herald, I thought it was all to do with Banks’s fear of South Auckland Polynesians hopping through his Epsom windows, just another racist kneejerk. Of course, it is that, but the definition of burglary has also been changed. It used to be defined (roughly) as being in an enclosed place with the intent to commit a crime. Crime, defined by the Crimes Act, has now been lowered to offence, as defined by the Summary Offences Act. A burglary does not require the theft of property, which is how Lucy Lawless was charged with burglary. In fact, until the freedom warriors change the law to make incest legal, entering a building to have group sex with a few close relatives could actually result in a burglary charge. Jamie had better get moving before ACT loses even more members to prison.
We can easily keep the prison population low if we execute people for burglary.
Public executions would also be a crowd pleaser
Perhaps we should also hang, draw and quarter you, Andys, just because it would be a fun filled event lots of people on the site would love to attend !
(N.B. Attendants should wear wet weather gear and Wellington boots as there will be blood)
I don’t count myself among that number as I enjoy some of your princely Machiavellian humour and have even learned something about thorium nuclear reactions.
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