ACT’s law and order revenge fantasy is going to cause predictable social carnage
Three Strikes to restore law and order
“The Labour Government turned its back on victims of serious crime when it repealed the Three Strikes legislation. ACT is bringing it back,” says ACT’s Justice spokesperson Todd Stephenson.
“Three Strikes was an ACT idea introduced in 2010 to send a signal to violent offenders that New Zealanders won’t tolerate repeated violent and sexual offending.
“The average Three Strikes offender had 75 convictions. Just 24 people were sentenced to a Third Strike. The total number of people sentenced to a first, second or third strike accounted for just one percent of the people sentenced in our courts. They were the worst of the worst. These offenders leave behind a long list of victims, some who will never fully recover from the trauma.
“Labour spent six years cuddling criminals and ignoring victims. We’re turning this around.
“Since Labour set a goal to reduce the prison population by 30 per cent, more criminals have been receiving home detention instead of going to jail. It was a priority for ACT to abolish this target which we secured as part of our coalition agreement.
“Victims of violent crime deserve justice and New Zealanders deserve to be safe.”
“Prisoners will have a better chance of reintegrating into society and building a better life as a result of my Member’s Bill,” says ACT MP Todd Stephenson.
“The Parole (Mandatory Completion of Rehabilitative Programmes) Amendment Bill will require prisoners to complete skills and rehabilitation programmes before they will be considered for parole.
“Prisoners face many barriers to gaining employment post-release. While in prison, they have time on their hands and they should be required to use it. This will enable them to have a better life on release and make it less likely they’ll reoffend.
“Parliament has a responsibility to make our communities safer. We have a fresh opportunity with this Bill to improve lives and reduce victims of crime.
“My Bill would stop any prisoner being eligible for parole if they had not completed a programme set in a mandated management plan under the Corrections Act. It would apply to every prisoner with a sentence over two months in prison to undertake such a programme, and could even speed up release in some circumstances.
“The Bill allows an offender’s next parole hearing to be brought forward if the prison manager considers that the relevant rehabilitative programme has been completed earlier than the specified date.
“A rehabilitative programme is defined as a programme designed to reduce reoffending and includes any medical, psychological, social, therapeutic, cultural, educational, employment-related, rehabilitative or integrative programme.
“This is a constructive change to the law that would improve the lives of offenders and the wider public by lessening the chances of recidivism and I hope it gets broad support from my Parliamentary colleagues. It’s the right thing to do.”
Todd Stephenson is ACTs Justice Spokesperson and Poetry reviewer, who recently complained about Pacific Island Poetry being too mean to Cracker.
Does he hold both portfolios so he can send the Poets straight to prison?
There is an enormous problem with ACTs 3 strikes law and plan to force every prisoner to complete rehabilitation programmes before they gain parole.
Firstly, ACT’s 3 strikes can cause massive deformities in justice…
New Zealand Labour repeals three-strikes law its says led to ‘absurd’ sentences
New Zealand’s Labour government has repealed the controversial “three strikes” law under which a mentally ill man was sentenced to seven years in prison for trying to kiss a stranger in the street.
The law, introduced by the previous National-led government, forced judges to automatically give a maximum sentence to any criminals who had committed three serious sex, violent or drug crimes over their lifetime – regardless of the timeframe of offending, discretion of the judge, or other mitigating factors.
Labour had promised to repeal the law, which it said was “ineffective” and responsible for “absurd outcomes”.
The justice minister, Kiritapu Allan, said on its repeal that the three-strikes law was “a kneejerk reaction to crime” that resulted in disproportionate and excessive sentences.
“There was no evidence that it worked. It failed to be a deterrent to offenders, it failed the taxpayer, and it failed victims, because it ensured they were in the system for longer,” she said.
Allan noted that judges still retained the power to issue lengthy sentences and could impose the same restrictions as provided by the three-strikes law “in appropriate cases”.
In one of the most high-profile New Zealand cases, Daniel Clinton Fitzgerald was sentenced to seven years in jail, after being convicted in 2018 of trying to kiss a woman on a Wellington street without her permission. At the time, the judge indicated that the circumstances of Fitzgerald’s offending would not usually result in prison time, but his hands were tied by the law. The supreme court overturned the sentence in 2021, citing Fitzgerald’s “significant mental health issues” including schizophrenia.
In a briefing, the corrections department, police and justice ministry said there was no local or international evidence that three-strikes laws deterred reoffending. “Based on the data alone, there is no distinct indication that the three-strikes legislation is deterring individuals from committing qualifying offences,” it said. Under the repeal, judges will still be able to impose maximum sentences, but they will not be automatic.
…we give Judges the discretion to make judgments tempered with mercy and not draconian revenge fantasies by the frightened populace.
ACT are attempting to take that independence away from Judges and we will get cruel sentences from it.
The problem with the demand for rehabilitation before parole is that it doesn’t seem to understand the current policy.
Prisoners have to admit their guilt before they can access any rehabilitation programs. For many this demand for an admission of guilt makes them dig their heals in and prisoners end up serving their entire lag inside and come out without one hours worth of rehab.
These men become institutionalised and commit worse crimes.
We send damaged broken men to prison and after a full lag, they come out monsters.
These prisoners will serve their entire sentence so making them do rehab before parole is a meaningless threat, equally for prisoners in remand, for them to access rehab they have to admit their offending as well, and seeing as most will not have even stood trial yet. why the fuck would they admit guilt before their trial is even heard?
Look, if you Lynch mob revenge fantasists want to lock people up for long periods of time, fine – but for the love of fuck, remove the requirement for the prisoner to admit guilt before they can access the rehab programmes!
ACT’s measures won’t work, all they will do is jam more prisoners into our underfunded, corrupt, violent prison system and lead to a prison riot.
As prisoner numbers soar, wait for ACT to suggest private prisons as the solution.
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Judges are there to implement the law and parliaments are elected to write the law.
The very fact that liberal judges looked for wriggle room in the previous law is the exactly the reason ACT are reimposing it in a more stringent form – some judges cannot be trusted to carry out the will of the people.
These judges live in flash suburbs behind high walls with security systems. This means they are not exposed to the results their own willful ignorance.
No matee. If the government has skills and those skilled people go to the private sector to double up on those skills then that is corruption. Because the Chinese economy is now double that of the U.S. trying to find cheapness like serco. Look we can’t cheap out. We have to search for higher wages and there for high productivity. Today is the day matee. The battle space is being prepared. You are either one of us or you are a sell out. Choose.
Sorry Sam but Andrew’s argument wins my vote
I’m not trying to win votes. Never have.
Jesus listen to you. How Republican can you sound? The “will of the people” and “liberal judges”. To top it off the judges are supposedly living in gated communities. All huge generalisations.
What a stupid requirement for access to rehabilitation. It doesn’t matter what the person says as to their guilt or not, they have been deemed to be guilty anyway.
Two important issues for us as Māori that have been holding us back is the crown giving us crappy landlocked land and perpetual leases. The blatant unfairness when it comes to how we have been treated by the crown when it comes to our land and ownership issues.
The old protestant mentality to anti social behavior. Bring out the big stick and punish them into submission.
Rawiri Paratene was at one time a visiting arts tutor in schools giving them poetry, plays as part of art education. He chose a bloodthirsty example once and was taken to task about that. I think it related to Pakeha and Maori confrontations.
I think that arts study should include how poetry expresses feelings and responses that are unfettered by thel limitations of normal language and communication; that flows above and beyond to stir the prosaic day and mind. But it would be wise to know that poems are unfettered by everyday real concerns; they go beyond reality to the possible, the unseen, the ethereal, the spiritual. That thought might have been a good one to convey. It was not then and in today’s ‘edgication’ that sort of balanced sensitivity is not assured.
Marama Davidson is Rawiri’s daughter I believe. If the Greens had been able to mentally soar like helium balloons, but hold onto the strings, a requirement with those balloons, what good the sensitives could have done; new fields, old fields in different ways being traversed.
National attempting imaginary paths will need careful guidance but lack the depth of understanding to comprehend; they would abide with common-sense probably. (Einstein supposed quote, the wisdom acquired by year 18; male maturity said to happen about 25. Female earlier, but often just a working model of true maturity, never refined.)
You must live in a dream world if you think that ACT with 8.64% represents the will of the people. You should have worked out from having corrections help prisoners fill in the forms for home detention that the idea that prisoners can be upskilled will not work for all of them & it is also common knowledge that prisons function as a mental health service as well so that will restrict the number of prisoners that can be taught as well.
Disgusting – why oh why are we not looking at halving our prison population. Imagine having the two rivers in Christchurch absolutely clean – swimmable… Using home detention people. Stop banging up people for ridiculous crimes. We never ever truly go after the white collar criminals for the $9 billion that they are responsible for, much easier to catch the beneficiary it is pathetic. We could have a prison population of 200 – all of them with serious mental health problems – rapists, murderers, paedophiles. The rest should be working – in working parties.
So those judges live in Epsom,? Hmmmm.
Sorry Trevor Sam’s argument wins my vote.
Everything Seymour says smacks of privilege. What has Seymour ever proposed to support rehabilitation? Remember Seymour protesting against state housing being built in Epsom? That’s all we need to know about Seymours type.
You of all people should know that Teev with your self proclaimed volunteering role.
Sending people into an understaffed corrupt hostile prison is the problem. Thinking rehab is possible in this environment with a severe shortage of theapists is just wishful thinking.
Arbitary 3 strikes penalties didn’t work before.
Time to look for real solutions, not political click bait.
ACT want to do what some states and cities do in the USA, and cut funding for welfare, housing, schools and hospitals, and put it into police and prisons. I think New York in the past few months closed its libaries in the weekend, and used the money saved to increase overtime pay for police officers. This is probably what is going to happen here. Sack teacher aides and learning advisors and use the funds to employee more cops, and more prisons officers. Then they can arrest those kids that fall through the cracks and lock them up.
Jesus Christ, we know what a successful prison system looks like, so why do we not adopt something like that rather than the American system which just locks people away for – sometimes thousands of years. If harsh punishments cut down crime, the US would be one of the most safe countries in the world. It’s not.
I totally agree GS.