Sensible Sentencing Trust launches Stop the Three Strikes Sellout website

The Sensible Sentencing Trust has announced:

Before Labour repealed it in 2022, the Three Strikes law operated for 12 years from 2010.

In that time, there were:

• 14,687 First strikers
• About 750 second strikers
• 25 Third Strikers

Every one of the 25 Third Strikers was a recidivist serious violent or sexual offender, by definition, having committed at least three “strike” offences.

However, the Government’s proposed Three Strikes 2.0 will not only give a “clean slate” to all prior strike offenders, the minimum 24 months imprisonment threshold waters it down so severely, that less than 30% of Third Strike offenders would qualify as Third Strikers if they committed the same offences again!

	Three Strikes 1.0	Estimated number under Proposed Three Strikes 2.0	Consequence of strike status
# of 1ststrikers	14,687 offenders	7,464 offenders	Warning only
# of 2ndStrikers	Around 750 offenders	Around 235 offenders	No parole or early release
# of 3rdStrikers	25 offenders	7 offenders	Maximum sentence without parole

• Only 7 of the 25 Third Strikers would be Third Strikers if they did it all again.
• 6 of the 25 Third Strikers would only be Second Strikers if they did it all again.
• 11 of the 25 Third Strikers would only be First Strikers if they did it all again.
• 1 of the 25 Third Strikers would be a Zero Strikers if he did it all again.

A coalition Government that consistently talked tough at the last election can and must do better than this.

The proposed Three Strikes Reinstatement Bill is now before the Justice Select Committee and public submissions are open until next Tuesday 23 July.The Sensible Sentencing Trust has launched a campaign website which allows submissions to be made quickly and easily.  

You can sign up for campaign updates and support the campaign at https://www.stop3strikessellout.nz.

You can make a submission at https://www.stop3strikessellout.nz/submission