Government set to bring back Three Strikes law, Labour warns of injustice

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announcing the Govt is to bring back the Three Strikes law, Parliament, Wellington. 22 April, 2024. New Zealand Herald photograph by Mark Mitchell

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee unveiled a revised Three Strikes law, which was abolished under the Labour Government.

The new legislation would cover the same 40 serious violent and sexual offences as the former legislation, with the addition of the new strangulation and suffocation offence.

It would also only apply to sentences above 24 months. There would also be a mechanism to allow judicial discretion not to impose the mandatory sentence or parole requirements when it would be “manifestly unjust to do so”, McKee said.

McKee said there would be a “limited benefit” for those offenders who made guilty pleas to recognise the fact it would save a victim going through a court trial. She said offenders could access a maximum of a 20 per cent reduction of their sentence if they pleaded guilty, if it was their third strike.

McKee said she would take a draft bill and paper to Cabinet by the end of June, and to introduce the bill to the House soon after that. It was her intention the bill would come into force six months after it passed through the House to account for necessary changes to IT systems, for example.

Labour justice spokesman Duncan Webb said the resurrection of the Three Strikes regime was “political posturing of the worst kind”.

“Three strikes did not reduce serious offending, as Act and National claimed it would,” Webb said.

“In fact there was almost no evidence to show it deters offending, and instead it resulted in severe distortions in sentencing third-strike offenders.”

Webb said it had led to unjust sentencing.

”One example provided at the time the legislation was repealed was a person who was jailed for 10 years, where the sentencing judge said they would ordinarily have imposed 18 months in prison for that kind of offending.

“Another saw a person get a sentence of seven years in prison for patting a prison guard’s bottom. That was unjust and can still occur under this new proposal.”

The Three Strikes system was implemented in 2010 under the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act. It was a punitive measure aimed at repeat offenders. The law primarily targeted people committing serious violent and sexual offences.

Offenders were given three “strikes”. After being convicted of a third serious offence, the offender would receive the maximum sentence without parole. The law primarily targeted serious violent and sexual offenders.

Under the regime, the first and second strikes incurred normal sentences. However, upon the third strike, the offender faced harsher consequences, irrespective of the severity of the third offence. Even if the third offence is relatively minor, the offender received the maximum penalty for that offence.

Labour first attempted to repeal the law in its first term but was blocked by NZ First.

Luxon and McKee cited advice that said the change would mean between 33 to 89 more people would be imprisoned after 10 years. After that decade, it was estimated the cost of the extra inmates would be up to $10.7 million per year.

McKee said there would be “guiding principles” in the new legislation which would allow judges to apply it more effectively.

She said it was important that lower-level offending wasn’t caught up by Three Strikes legislation.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.