August 05, 2022
Sentence declared on three strikes law
Justice Minister Kiritapu Allen says she’s looking forward to getting bad laws off the books.
Parliament is working through the stages of repealing the Sentencing and Parole Reform Act, also known as the three strikes law, which was introduced in 2010 by the National-ACT coalition.
Ms Allen says the criticisms Labour had at the time have been proved correct, and 70 percent of cases where the law was used were Maori.
“I’ve got case upon case, upon case, where people are in jail for far longer than they should be, there was no incentive for people to plead guilty to an offence because they were going to get the maximum penalty, that meant the processes in the court were far longer than they should have been,” she says.
Ms Allen says the law took the discretion away from judges to take a range of factors into account when sentencing.