[11] The Ministry of Justice says the law was "intended to deter repeat offenders with the threat of progressively longer mandatory prison terms, and to penalise those who continued to re-offend through a three-stage process.
"[12] The Sentencing and Parole Reform Act 2010 created a three-stage system of increasing consequences for repeat violent offenders.
[4][13] If the second or third qualifying offence is murder, then the court must impose a sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole, unless it deems it manifestly unjust to do so.
[16] The Act also introduced the option to impose life imprisonment without possibility of parole for murder regardless of the offender's previous convictions.
As of 2022[update], Brenton Tarrant, perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings, is the only person sentenced to life imprisonment without parole under this provision.
A majority of the New Zealand House of Representatives voted to accept the amendments recommended by the Law and Order select committee and to pass the Bill through its second reading.
The Bill's supporters including its sponsor Minister of Corrections Judith Collins, fellow National MP Melissa Lee and ACT leader Rodney Hide argued that a three-stage sentencing regime would increasing public safety while providing a warning to offenders to amend their ways.
Referring to the anomalous sentencing of Wiremu Allen described below, National’s Justice spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, said: “It is unimaginable that offenders such as Wiremu Allen, who was convicted of a third strike offence which entailed breaking into a house, demanding money from the victim and then shooting him, would not receive the maximum mandatory sentence today.
[23] In December 2016, a mentally ill man, Daniel Fitzgerald, was sentenced to seven years in prison after he approached a woman he didn't know and kissed her on the cheek in the street in Wellington.
Under the three strikes law, the judge had to impose the maximum prison sentence of seven years for the kiss, designated as indecent assault.
In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the sentence of seven years under the three strikes law was so grossly disproportionate that it breached his human rights.
He and a younger man had forced their way into a Stokes Valley flat in the early hours of June 15, 2019, trying to collect a debt.
At sentencing, Justice Karen Clark said Allen would have received only two years and one month in prison if not subject to the third strikes regime.
His lawyer, Chris Nicholls, said that without the punitive three strikes restrictions, after the time he had already spent in custody on remand, Allen would have been released in four weeks and sent to an intensive treatment and rehabilitation programme.
[27][28] On 30 May 2018, Justice Minister Little announced that the Labour coalition government would be taking steps to repeal the "three-strikes law" in early June.
[30] On 11 June 2018, Andrew Little announced that the Government would be abandoning its efforts to repeal the "three-strikes law" due to opposition from its coalition partner, the populist conservative New Zealand First.
Similarly, Green MP Elizabeth Kerekere welcomed the repeal of the "three strikes" legislation, arguing that it was "punitive rather than restorative justice and rehabilitation."
[9][36] On 24 November 2023, the newly-formed Sixth National Government and its ACT and New Zealand First coalition partners vowed to reinstate three-strikes legislation.