The United Bermuda Party yesterday expanded on its "three strikes and you're out programme," explaining it would mean mandatory prison term extensions for the third serious offence.

However, Progressive Labour Party Minister David Burch yesterday dismissed the plan as "draconian" and an example of playing on people's fears.

According to lawyer Mark Pettingill, UBP candidate for Warwick West, 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 PLP of trying to mislead voters by claiming the UBP wants to imprison such offenders for life when this was not the case.

"Let me make it clear to the PLP and the people of Bermuda what the policy means. Criminals convicted of trafficking hard drugs for a third time will get a mandatory consecutive jail term on top of their sentence. Those convicted a third time of serious offences such as robbery and serious sexual assault will get an additional consecutive jail sentence," he said.

"The United Bermuda Party believes in rehabilitation as well as punishment. Judges will put offenders on order rehabilitation programmes to give them a chance to turn their lives around.

"But if they commit these offences a third time they are clearly not getting the message and they will get extra jail time."

However, Senator Burch, Minister for Public Safety, said: "They're draconian measures and I would have thought that even though they are the new UBP they might have learned from their predecessors that that sort of attitude does not work in a community this size.

"There's a small element of our inmate population that are hard core criminals. The vast majority of them, we believe as a Government, are able to be rehabilitated and I believe that is the route that we must go.

"We are such a small community, I take the personal view that no matter what punishment you mete out to people who break the law they are eventually going to come back and live with us.

"It is in our own personal vested interest that we try and rehabilitate as many of those inmates as we can so that when some of us are pushing around in our wheelchairs we don't have them crawl into our windows to beat us over our heads for what little material wealth we may have. I think it's short sighted, I think that it is purely electioneering in terms of trying to address a feeling in the community of unsafeness."

Minister of Social Rehabilitation Dale Butler said: "They want to put young Bermudians in prison and eventually release hardened criminals. We want to rehabilitate them with the Mirrors programme to turn them into productive members of society. That's a fundamental difference between their far right wing plan and our progressive approach."

Responding, Mr. Pettingill said the PLP has failed to do anything constructive to crack down on crime since it was elected in 1998.

"That feeling of 'unsafeness' is something that exists across the board... we don't need to worry about someone crawling in through Lt. Col. Burch's window when he's 80. We're talking about people crawling through people's windows now," he said.

In addition, the PLP poured cold water on UBP assertions that crime is on the rise, saying in a statement: "Violent crime is down. In 1996, there were 350 total crimes of violence. In 1997, there were 309 total crimes of violence. In 2006, there were 305 incidents. Theft is down.

"In 1996, there were 324 incidents of theft. In 1997, there were 429 thefts. In 2006, there were 263 thefts. Burglary is constant. In 1996, 982 breaking offences. In 1997, there were 1,241 breaking offences.

"In 2006, there were 1,142 breaking offences. Total crime incidents are down. In 1996, there were 2,864 total incidents. In 1997, there were 3,205. In 2006, there were 2,637 total incidents."