A violation of law, justice, and decency

This morning, in a desperate effort to distract attention from the suppurating sore of contempt that is Andrew Bayly, National announced that it would be bringing back its "three strikes" regime. The policy never worked and had no significant quantifiable benefits; but National doesn't care, despite a commitment in both coalition agreements that policy would be "evidence-based". Instead, they seem to think the reason it didn't work was because they simply weren't vicious enough. So this time round, they'll not only be lowering the threshold for a 'strike" - they'll also be imposing them retrospectively:

The regime would also be retrospective, capturing all the strike convictions in the old regime that would count in the new one.

This is despite officials warning this would “contravene a fundamental justice right only to be subject to penalties that were in place at the time of the relevant offending (Bora section 26)”.

Murder Minister Nicole McKee disagrees, which I think shows her complete lack of understanding of not just the BORA, but of justice. The right to the lesser penalty has been black-letter law in this country since at least 1980, thanks to s22 of the Criminal Justice Amendment Act 1980, and I suspect it goes back much further in caselaw (the law codifying practice rather than creating a new principle). We're committed to it under Article 11 of the UDHR and Article 15 of the ICCPR, so National's tyranny will put us in breach of our international obligations. And as we are subject to universal periodic review as well as an individual complaints mechanism, they will be called on it.

But National doesn't care about any of that. All they care about is the sugar hit of "tough on crime" headlines. And as with their prisoner voting law or their climate change policies, complying with our international obligations will be a problem for the next government (which National will of course criticise them for).