April 23, 2024
Māori likely target in three strikes return
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon won’t rule out Māori being disproportionately affected under a revised three strikes law.
The Government announced yesterday cabinet had agreed to bring back the law for chronic, repeat and violent offenders, which was repealed by Labour in 2022.
A Treasury evaluation of the law at that time found during the decade it was in effect Māori were almost nine times more likely to receive a first strike than Europeans or other ethnicities and over 18 times more likely to receive a second.
Of the 17 individuals who received a third strike which meant the sentencing judge had to impose the maximum jail term without parole, 82 percent were Māori.
Ms McKee says the new three strikes cleans up some issues highlighted under the Bill of Rights and gives judges more discretion in cases where harsh outcomes would be manifestly unjust.
“In a revised and what I think is an improved three strikes regime, lower level offending, those where sentences are 24 months or less, will not be captured in the three strikes regime, and to be quite frank whether it’s Māori, Pasifika or anybody else it’s taking away the criminal activity from all New Zealanders that is being committed by all New Zealanders regardless of their ethnicity,” she says.
The list of offences triggering a strike has been extended to 40 with the inclusion of strangulation and suffocation.
Ms McKee says the bill could lead to up to 90 extra prisoners a year over the next 10 years, costing up to an extra $11m.
Te Pati Maori justice spokesperson Takuta Farris says the decision to reintroduce three strikes will exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system.
He says there was no evidence the policy reduces crime anywhere it has been tried.
Being harder on crime equates to being harder on Māori and those too brown to be white.
The Green Party’s Tamatha Paul says bringing back three-strikes is an unwelcome return to a failed American-style approach to justice.
She says it’s shameful New Zealand has one of the highest imprisonment rates in the developed world despite mounting evidence mass incarceration has failed to bring down rates of crime, keep communities safe, or rehabilitate those in our system.