Rodney Hide

Wellington, April 7 NZPA - ACT's highly publicised "three-strikes" policy would not have saved the 77 lives they claimed, new figures show.

ACT's tough anti-crime election policies included a three-strikes policy, which would give a sentence of 25-years to life to anyone convicted three times of a violent offence.

During the campaign Mr Hide placed 77 coffin lids against the wall of Mt Eden prison to highlight the lives he said could have been saved by the policy.

But information provided under the Official Information Act to Rethinking Crime and Punishment's Kim Workman, an opponent of the policy, showed of the 423 prisoners serving life sentences not one would have been stopped by the proposed three-strikes law.

None of the prisoners would have reached three-strikes before being given their life sentence, according to the definition of a "strike" in the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill.

Neither William Bell, who killed three people at the Panmure RSA in 2001, nor the late Antonie Dixon, who went on a 2003 rampage where he attacked two women with a samurai sword and killed James Te Aute by shooting him repeatedly in the back, would have qualified for a life sentence prior to their most recent life sentence under the three-strikes law.

Mr Workman said ACT needed to "put things right".

ACT's original figures were based on a broader list of violent offences and did not have to carry a sentence of five-years or more.

ACT law and order spokesman David Garrett said the "original ACT version" of the policy would have saved the lives but the National version would not.

"The bill is currently before select committee and during this process the bill can be further modified to better achieve its purpose or remove unintended consequences."

Labour Party leader Phil Goff said ACT campaigned on the lives that would have been saved.

"I think the ACT party was elected on a fraud.

"(ACT) said that it would have saved 77 lives to introduce this legislation, the figures show that no lives would have been saved."

Mr Goff called on ACT leader Rodney Hide to apologise to the public for getting "something as fundamentally wrong as that".

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