Government succumbs to Sensible Sentencing Trust pressure and makes Three Strikes Bill worse

Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, October 22nd, 2024 - 10 comments
Categories: act, law, law and "order", Media, national, same old national, the praiseworthy and the pitiful - Tags:

You have to hand it to this Government, it is utterly predictable.

Faced with a barrage of problems from the Health Crisis to a potential Auditor General investigation into Casey Costello’s links to Philip Morris to Andrew Bayly suggesting that he thinks ordinary workers are losers they badly needed something to divert attention. They needed something else to talk about and get people chattering.

And they have this habit of bending to pressure from the more rabid of their supporters. For a supposedly tough Government they bend at the slightest pressure.

These two features may explain why the Government has made an announcement of a tweak to this Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill which is currently being considered by the Justice Select Committee.

The Bill contains a limitation that a qualifying offence not only has to be from a list of serious offences but for a conviction to qualify the sentence for the offending must have been over two years imprisonment. This sifts out unusual offending which although serious did not justify a heavy sentence. Two 18 year olds taking someone’s hat by force is an example.

The New Zealand Law Society considered this as part of its submission and said:

The Law Society supports the introduction of such a threshold, but recommends consideration of a higher threshold than the proposed ‘more than 24 months’ imprisonment’. A higher threshold would serve the purposes of the Bill without capturing less serious offending that sits on the bridge between home detention and imprisonment.

I have had a quick look through the submissions that were made. A total of 771 are recorded on the Parliamentary website and many of them appear to be form submissions with the same wording.

When I googled one of the phrases that appeared regulary I was led directly to the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s website. They had set up a generate your own submission page.

And surprise, surprise they are upset at the length of the qualifying sentence.

Their form submission says this:

” … by setting a minimum sentence of 24 months imprisonment to qualify as a strike offence (at all three stages of the regime), this will encourage Judges to “game” the system and sentence even softer – to avoid having to make a serious violent or sexual criminal a “striker”.

The former Three Strikes regime was effective because it only required a conviction for the offence to be considered a strike offence – with no minimum sentence threshold.

One of the purposes of Three Strikes is to require Judges to impose tough sentences – because they generally refuse to do so. Allowing them to game the system to avoid it where possible is like putting a wolf in charge of a hen house! It makes no sense – except to Judges, who will love it.

Both National and ACT promised to restore Three Strikes – not restore only 30% of it. This proposal will allow 70% of New Zealand’s worst repeat serious sexual or violent criminals off the hook. That means victims of serious repeat violent or sexual offenders will not get the justice they deserve.

National and ACT should stick to their promise to restore law and order, putting victim’s rights before those of serious recidivist criminals. After 6 years of an offender-friendly Labour Government, the public expect tough sentencing.

The 24 months imprisonment threshold is not necessary at Stage-1, Stage-2 and Stage-3. It simply serves to heavily reduce the number of recidivist offenders making it to third strike stage and therefore subject to a lengthy sentence.”

It sounds like the submission has been sent to Ministers as well as members of the Justice Committee. And it looks like the Government has buckled to the pressure.

From Radio New Zealand:

[Minister Nicole] McKee now plans to lower the qualifying sentence threshold for the first strike, from 24 months imprisonment across the board to 12 months, after listening to submitters

She said the coalition had received feedback saying it “hadn’t gone far enough” with the new three strikes legislation.

“We’ve heard from many people, especially through emails to my office, which has stated that this [the new regime] has not gone far enough, that we needed to make it stronger and strengthen it for the victims in our communities.

“They’re basically saying that there are a number of very serious violent and sexual offenders who they think would bypass the three strikes regime.” …

McKee defended her decision to lower the threshold, despite saying in June that 24 months struck the right balance. She also acknowledged at the time that there was concern that in some cases the regime was capturing offending that was too low-level, resulting in disproportionately harsh sentences.

McKee said she changed her mind after “listening to the people and what they’re saying”.

By “the people” I presume she meant “people who used the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s submission generator”.

Then Christopher Luxon was interviewed. In a perfect example of a word salad he said this:

“The public played back very strongly to the government they wanted the bill and the act and the law to be tougher and harder. That led to changes around the carryover of strikes under the old regime… to reducing the threshold as a means of toughening and hardening the law up.

“So that’s a good example I think where Parliament and the people working together have got to a better outcome… If you go talk to anyone in New Zealand, they really want to make sure we’re restoring law and order.”

He dismissed concerns from legal experts, saying he was “doing it for the New Zealand people”.

It is funny that he should confuse the public with the Sensible Sentencing Trust.

The Three Strikes Law is a a sports slogan masquerading as a serious penal policy.  Its genesis was the US of A where an informed considered approach to criminal justice is subservient to good old tough on crime toting politicians.

The changes to this version of the law including the manifestly unjust exception and the qualifying sentence requirement were an attempt to fend off Bill of Rights arguments that will be raised if the Bill is passed.

By succumbing to pressure from the Sensible Sentencing Trust and winding back on the qualifying sentence requirement the Government has increased the chances of a successful challenge. And shown how weak it is.

10 comments on “Government succumbs to Sensible Sentencing Trust pressure and makes Three Strikes Bill worse ”

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  1. SPC 1
    22 October 2024 at 12:38 pm

    Law and order, the haves maintaining a ruling order, the gated community extending its reach whenever its party is in government.

    Theft of Maori land was just the beginning.

    The ultimate goal to rule as if only those who own property vote/count. The landlords/capitalists rentier regime.

    If it was about law and order – landlords would not write the tenancy rules, employers would not write labour laws, the same approach would apply to the wealthy/those of business as to the beneficiary in our (governance) courts and all income would be taxed (35/36 CG and 24/36 inheritance OECD nations).

  2. tc 2
    22 October 2024 at 1:08 pm

    "For a supposedly tough Government they bend at the slightest pressure" from the voting blocks they don't want to lose to NZF and ACT everytime mickey.

    It also plays into the incarceration expansion model they've got going on…..F the downstream impacts they'll be long gone.

    • Descendant Of Smith 2.1
      22 October 2024 at 1:53 pm

      So the right organised themselves to submit en mass Where was the left.? 771 submissions – not a lot of organised response when the chance was there.

      Iwi, Greens, Labour, …..

  3. Patricia Bremner 3
    22 October 2024 at 2:23 pm

    Well DoS, Perhaps they are shattered and battered by half their family losing jobs?

    The shrinking work opportunities and new 'obligations' leave little room to plan and execute when rent and food become the issue.

    Why is the outcome of bad governance laid on the victims?

    This was to DoS.@ 2.1

  4. AB 4
    22 October 2024 at 3:10 pm

    Prediction in search of some data:

    If you lock more people up for longer, you'll get a temporary reduction in crime for a while. That's until the system stabilises and people start getting out of gaol at about the same rate as they are going in. Then it will start going up again and reach even higher levels than it would have if you had done nothing at all. Plus you will have wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on increasing prison capacity.

    • Descendant Of Smith 4.1
      22 October 2024 at 4:01 pm

      Likely worse. People will come out more hardened and bitter and their families will also be more dysfunctional in many cases.

      Even simple things like bring you "Dad to school day" can have quite significant impacts on children who can't cause their dad is in jail.

      A study by Gordon (2011) reported that within New Zealand, at any one time, an estimated 20,000 children experience parental incarceration, with an average of 87% of female prisoners and 65% of male prisoners having children at the time of their sentencing. This, she identifies, translates annually to around an astounding 30,000 New Zealand children experiencing the loss of a parent or parents to prison.

      Homelessness is a common feature within the literature of parental imprisonment. Wildeman (2014) found in his study that when compared with a comparison group, child homelessness increased by 2 to 4% after the imprisonment of their father, with a slightly smaller percentage when it was their mother.

      https://mro.massey.ac.nz/server/api/core/bitstreams/9abf9d44-f343-4f0b-a77f-b2c776af4e7e/content

    • Craig H 4.2
      22 October 2024 at 6:08 pm

      I agree, it's a natural prediction based on duration of sentence largely not affecting recidivism rates. One exception is really long sentences do work for reducing recidivism, but that costs a lot anyway and comes with human rights issues with disproportionately severe punishments.

  5. Mike the Lefty 5
    22 October 2024 at 5:01 pm

    Once again the CoC proves that it values naked ideology and populist fervour over pragmatism. It values knee-jerk tub thumping over reasoned common sense.

    This is all about putting smiles on the old grey haired barnacled Ford Ranger -owning National key supporters who believe this is just a step towards what they REALLY want – restoration of capital punishment.

    This is not about preventing crime or addressing the causes of crime, it is not about victim support – it is about being SEEN to be doing something positive by indulging in ill-conceived populist vigilantism.

    Yet the masses will undoubtedly swallow this b..s as a symbol of the CoC being "tough on crime", abetted by their Newstalk ZB toadies and mutely supported by a public who are tired of being under-served by a woefully under-financed police force.

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