Editorial: Bill a clear signal

OPINION: The compromise reached between National and the ACT Party on the so-called three-strikes regime for dealing with repeat violent offenders is a sensible one.

It eliminates flaws in the original bill and will produce a law that deals effectively with the worst of our violent criminals in a way that voters have shown they want. It reflects a policy on which both the ACT Party and National campaigned during the last election, but the substance of it is from ACT and thus represents another considerable political achievement for the party's leader, Rodney Hide.

While imprisonment may be an expensive and hopelessly inefficient way of trying to reform criminals, it is, for serious crimes, the only form of punishment and retribution available, and there is no doubt that it can be a deterrent for potential offenders. It has long been shown that crime is effectively deterred when criminals know they are likely to caught and that, when they are, they will be appropriately punished for their offences. The Government's proposed bill will leave offenders in no doubt of the outcome if they continue to commit serious crimes.

Under the proposed regime, a person who commits one of the 36 qualifying offences will be sentenced in the same way as they are now. That means that if the sentence is one of imprisonment, then only a part of this must be served in prison. But offenders will be warned that if they commit a second of the qualifying offences, they will receive the same sentence as they would now but will serve, in prison, the whole of any term of imprisonment they are given. On a third offence, the sentence will be the maximum for the crime and all of it will have to be served in prison. The only exception would be if it were "manifestly unjust" for such a sentence to be imposed.

The qualifying crimes are those that cause the most outrage – violent crimes like murder, rape, serious assaults and the like. If the law makes no change in the incidence of such offending, then no more than a dozen offenders a year are like to be affected.

That may make the change seem like pandering to simple-minded, populist sentiment. There may indeed be an element of that, but it is not the whole story. For one thing, the law makes a strong statement that the Government will not tolerate violent crime in our society. Such gestures are worth making and as such the proposed law is to be commended.

But, more importantly, evidence from other jurisdictions clearly shows that similar laws elsewhere have deterred serious crime. The most commonly cited example is the three-strikes law in California. The California law was not well constructed and has flaws that the bill proposed here has eliminated. But, for all those flaws, academic studies have shown that the law, which has been in effect for more than a decade, has measurably deterred the crimes it covers, despite a rise in other offending.

Imprisonment, of course, is the end of the criminal justice line. It is far better to try to identify potential offenders before they embark on a life of crime and to design and support effective programmes to prevent them doing so. Such programmes are unlikely to create such a stir, but they will be far more beneficial for society than any sentencing regime.

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