‘ Three-strikes’ law

Arguments for and against the ‘‘three-strikes’’ law were revitalised last week when the Crown appealed to have two criminals, Shane Pierre Harrison and Justin Vance Turner, jailed for the rest of their lives. Each had been convicted of separate murders but were spared being given mandatory life sentences without parole because the judges (who can exercise a limited discretion they allowed for dealing with third-strikers) ruled this would have been ‘‘manifestly unjust’’.

A few days later, in a lecture at Victoria University, Auckland University law Professor Warren Brookbanks reiterated his concerns about the three-strike law, which took effect in 2010. He had foreseen many relatively minor offenders being punished more harshly than they deserved. He still has this concern.

On the other hand, he cited research published earlier this year using publicly available sentencing data following the first 42 months of the regime’s operation. None of the data so far pointed strongly to the law having a powerful deterrent effect on criminal offending, he contended. Hence there could be a case for reducing the list of offences that qualify for three-strikes treatment, rather than increasing it as others advocate, while developing policy for dealing more effectively with the most prolific strike offences.

Lawyer Graeme Edgeler has been studying data too and said it looks like New Zealand’s version of the three-strikes law is working. Based on a mixture of published figures and information requested from officials, he found evidence of a reduction in subsequent offending by people who receive first-strike warnings, Thomas Lumley, Professor of Biostatistics at Auckland University, scrutinised Edgeler’s figures and affirmed that offences qualifying as ‘‘strikes’’ are 20 per cent down in the last five-year period compared with the previous five years. This could easily be explained as part of the long-term trends in crime, he acknowledged. But a much more substantial decrease in second-strike offences can’t be and is much larger than could be expected from random variation. The law isn’t keeping violent criminals off the streets, Lumley concluded. ‘‘But it does seem to be deterring second offences’’. He offered good advice. Reasonable people can still oppose the three-strikes law (as Edgeler does). But until someone comes up with more persuasive figures to the contrary, they should probably argue that the law is wrong in principle, not that it is ineffective.

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