Kim Workman, Director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment, revealed today that the Corrections information he quoted on the number of three strike offenders living in the community, was provided to Mr Garrett a year earlier.

"In an ACT press release dated 24th February, Mr Garrett MP, stated that "\\\"Mr Workman claimed to have obtained information from Corrections on the number of offenders with three \\\'strike\\\' convictions currently in the community - information that Corrections informed me was impossible to obtain because, among other reasons, prisoners released could have died or left the country."

"In fact, the same information was provided to Mr Garrett on 5 December 2007, before he became an MP. I requested similar information a year later, and was sent a copy of a letter sent to Mr Garrett in response to his Official Information request. The letter said,

"Note that, of all offenders managed by Corrections since 1980, 15,764 have been identified with three or more sentence episodes for violent offences. At time of writing, 2,049 of these were in prison. As the total prison population at present is approximately 8000, conceivably a "three strikes"-type law would add almost 14,000 additional prisoners to the population. This would result in a total population approaching 22,000 (or a rate of 536 per 100,000 of population)."

Mr Garrett's claims that I was given preferential treatment by the department are untrue, as is the claim that the department may have been too lazy to provide him with the same information.

I can only speculate as to why Mr Garrett has not used this information in pursuit of his 'three strikes' promotion."

ENDS

© Scoop Media

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