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UBP clarifies meaning of preventive detention

Preventive detention and the three strikes legislation proposed by the United Bermuda Party are one and the same thing, according to a UBP candidate.

Lawyer Mark Pettingill, UBP candidate for Warwick West, was asked to explain what the term meant at a news conference yesterday.

He said: "It is the same as the three strikes legislation. We would legislate statutory periods of preventive detention for persistent repeat offenders.

"After they had two chances where we would try and rehabilitate them if they committed a third offence we would add perhaps five years to their sentence.

"The important thing is we would have more educational opportunities in prison to give people skills and self worth. Many of the people I represent can't even read."

Earlier in the week Mr. Pettingill said the three strikes rule would mean a mandatory prison term extension of perhaps five years upon the third conviction for selling hard drugs and other serious crimes.

While the focus would be on rehabilitating those who may be in jail for their first or second offences, he said, the third time around, the hard core offender would be taken out of society for a long time.

He accused the Progressive Labour Party of trying to mislead voters by claiming the UBP wants to imprison such offenders for life when this was not the case.

Minister for Public Safety, Col. David Burch, has dubbed the measures "draconian".

And PLP supporter and criminal attorney Charles Richardson said he does not believe the UBP.

Yesterday he said: "Consider this: In every other jurisdiction in which this legislation (three strikes) exists (not many) it means that you go to prison for life upon conviction for the third offence. Hence the usage of the adverb "out".

"Furthermore, the proposal to imprison repeat offenders for longer periods under the increase for drug offences and the preventative detention scheme equate in substance to the very thing described by Mr. Pettingill on behalf of the UBP which he says is what they meant by Three strikes and Out.

"If this is their true position, why replicate the proposal in four similar ways under four separate headings?

"Of course they meant life, and this recent explanation is a deceptive attempt to make us look as if we have overreacted.

"Not only that, but the explanation proffered insults the intelligence of every Bermudian to whom it was addressed."