ACT announces Three Strikes policy for burglary

ACT want to impose a Three Strikes regime for burglary, requiring a minimum three-year prison sentence with no parole for anyone convicted of burglary three times.

Annoucing the policy, ACT deputy leader Nicole McKee said someone's home should be the one place they feel safe.

"In 2025, 184,000 New Zealanders were victims of burglary. Burglary is a recidivist crime, with the majority of people released from prison for burglary sent back to prison within two years. Nearly three-quarters are resentenced. Around one in four burglary victims have already been burgled before," McKee said.

"Judges keep using their leeway to give burglars more chances, and the burglars keep reoffending.".

The policy would see:

Anyone convicted of burglary three times receive a minimum sentence of three years in prison, with no parole, home detention, and no chance of early release.

It would apply both to someone facing their third conviction, or to someone facing a single conviction of three or more counts of burglary.

An aggravated burglary would trigger a strike under the new policy and the existing Three Strikes regime for violent crime.

Judges would still retain full discretion to impose any sentence between the three-year minimum and the 10-year maximum.

McKee said the policy was not "primarily" about deterring crime, but preventing it.

"Imprisoning repeat burglars will protect New Zealanders from a small group of offenders who have shown, time after time, that they have no respect for other people's homes or property. They will not be able to victimise us from a jail cell."

"When someone does the right thing, gets up and goes to work to unlock their own potential, they shouldn't have to worry about some deadbeat invading their home and taking their hard-earned property." McKee said.

McKee said that of the 1800 people convicted of burglary last year about 925 went to prison and not all of them would be eligible for a third strike.

Based on those figures, she said the policy would likely cost about $200 million for one year.

"Another thought to this as well though, which makes it harder to model, is that once a person is locked up for three years, they are not out there creating the same harm and doing the same crime.

"We fully expect the number of burglaries would drop, which in turn would mean that the number of people going to prison should drop."

Asked if a "warning" was enough to rehabilitate repeat offenders, McKee said she "would hope so".

"I think eventually we will get to a point where only the hardened career burglars will continue to carry on until they get to a point where they cannot any longer because they're locked behind bars.

"We want to try and give people those opportunities and putting them in prison so they're not creating more harm means that they will get an opportunity while they're in there to change their ways," she said.

McKee said there was "no need" to speak to her coalition partners on the policy.

"It's a campaign election policy but I would feel that our coalition would get in behind this because they have gotten behind ACT's ideas throughout this term of government.

"When we introduced three strikes, when we put sentencing caps, when we looked at aggravating factors for sentencing, we've had support amongst the coalition," she said.

The broader Three Strikes regime was reinstated in late 2024 after Labour abolished it in 2022.