No one would get a third strike!
The Herald reports that as currently defined, none of the 423 prisoners serving a life sentence would have reached their third strike before the offence that got them a life sentence.
The reason for this is the merger of National’s two strikes policy and ACT’s three strikes policy.
ACT’s original three strikes policy had a large number of violent or sexual offences as qualifying for a strike.
National’s two strikes policy defines a strike more narrowly – you have to have been actually sentenced to a prison term of five or more years for it to count as a strike. So ACT’s third strike of life with 25 years no parole would only occur if someone had on three seperate occassions been given a prison sentence of at least five years.
I doubt National will want to water down the definition of what counts as a strike – you then risk relatively minor offenders getting caught up in it.
My preferred policy remains a modified form of three strikes – using National’s definition of a strike being a sentence of at least five years:
- Normal sentence, normal parole (at 2/3rds)
- Normal sentence, no parole
- Maximum sentence for offence, no parole