According to a New Zealand Herald story today not even one of the 423 prisoners currently serving life sentences would have been caught earlier had the National/Maori/ACT coalition's Sentencing and Parole Reform ("3-Strike") legislation already been enacted in this country.
Department of Corrections' data indicates that none of the prisoners would have been "struck out" before the offence that earned them their life sentence. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565592
National and its allies should concentrate on serious policies to raise our economic development instead of wasting taxpayers' money - and wasting Parliament's limited time - with expensive, meaninless stunts like the Sentencing and Parole non-reform.
Exporters and tourism earners are again being hit as the NZ Dollar continues on its roller coaster ride that makes business planning near to impossible - the Reserve Bank is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the flying Kiwi acts to tigthen aggregate monetary conditions even as we enter the sixth consecutive quarter of recession.
If the governing parties have nothing meaningful to say or do to try and secure that export-led recovery that we must eventually have and really want to respond to the public's desire for much tougher terms and conditions for prisoners - why don't they do something simple like make life mean life?
Make a life term mean the natural life of the prisoner, or set it at 100 years. So instead of the 15 years or so that you get inside for a double murder, make it 200 years. Instead of the 17 years or so that you get for the murder of a family of five - make it 500 years.
That would be tough, it would be popular, most people would think it fairer than the current system and, importantly, it would be simple to enact so allowing Parliament to get back to addressing what to do get the unemployed into work, to get those in work into acquiring new skills and to get our export performance up.
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