It took four years of complex legal wrangling, nearly bankrupted an ailing Hindu guru and has cost the British taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds.

Labour and Maori Party strongholds will be hit if prisoners are stopped from voting, a prison reform group says.

Chris Barton was at the inquest into a harrowing story of youth suicide.

South Auckland small business owners are feeling safer after a series of violent attacks in 2008, but say more police and security are needed.

Both are loving mothers, who after years of devoted care to their disabled children felt they had no choice but to take the law into their own hands but while one was allowed to walk free from court yesterday the other will go to jail.

A proposed three strikes law would have done nothing to prevent some of New Zealand's most notorious killings, critics say.

Judith Collins has criticised the prison guards' union for suggesting the Government's 'three-strike' policy would put guards at risk.

Preventive detention will be retained as a sentencing option for judges under the Government's proposed "three strikes" legislation, Police Minister Judith Collins said today.

Offenders with a record will have "nothing to lose" and could be more likely to kill under the three-strikes law, a prisoners' advocate says.