California Three Strike Law Term Paper

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legislation, lawmakers need to focus on the public good, the possible repercussions of their actions, and most importantly, the "fairness" of their legislation. These three tenets seem to have been disregarded when California passed its 3-strikes law in 1994. The law has not only failed to serve the public good (both financially and in terms of crime), but it has created a dynamic within the criminal justice system that seeks to punish minor offenses, while shifting focus away from violent offenders. Worst of all, the 3-strikes rule has proven to be blatantly unfair. Not only is it exceedingly harsh in its penalization of convicts (particularly those accused of nonviolent crimes), but it is also applied disproportionately to minorities and the poor.

In order to understand the 3-strikes law, it is important to explore its origins and original intents. New approaches to solving crime reached a breaking point in the early nineties in California as crime rates reached continued to escalate. Policymakers were drawn to the fact that the majority of crimes within the state (both petty and serious offenses) were attributable to repeat offenders (NJ website).

In 1992, Polly Class, a 12-year-old girl was kidnapped from her home and murdered by a convicted child molester (NJ website). Richard Allen Davis, the man accused, had been convicted of kidnapping on two previous occasions (NJ website). The specifics of the case (particularly the fact that he been convicted twice before) drew outrage from many within the community and the state (NJ website). Polly's father, Marc, along with many other politicians hoping to reduce crime formed a coalition supporting 3-strikes laws. The new coalition pressured others for their support, branding the opposition as "soft on crime." Through some political manipulation and intimidation, the law was enacted in 1994 (NJ website).

Unlike other 3-strikes laws around the country, California's is unique in that it permits a lifetime sentence for any third offense, even one nonviolent by nature.

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California's 3-strikes law also includes juvenile adjucdications of 16 and 17-year-olds, and provides no "wash-out" period for long periods of time between offenses (FACT website).

As previously mentioned, the 3-strikes law does not fulfill the requirements of "public good." When we consider this term, we tend to think about policies that do more good than harm. This is certainly not the case with California's 3-strikes law. Firstly, it is an economic drain on the state (Butterfield). Jails are not cheap to build and maintain, and the increase of inmates due to the new approach to criminal justice has produced a huge financial gap in the state's budget (Butterfield).

California has the most state prison inmates of all the states, and is spending increasingly more to house them. The state pays $280 million to build a prison, and $80 million to operate them annually (FACT website). The state opened around twenty prisons during the nineties, yet predicted the need for seventeen more during the first years of the new millennium (Butterfield).

The California Department of Corrections has the largest budget of any state agency, and the increase of prisoners due to the 3-strikes law is only perpetuating the budget problem (the California budget is currently about $30 billion in debt, the largest of any state).

One of the ironies of California's 3-strike law is that many alternative to crime prevention (both more effective and cheaper) have been developed (Butterfield). Studies done in the early nineties (the time when California passed its 3-strikes law) proved that money spent towards crime prevention instead of jails was much more effective (Butterfield).

The fiscal problems are also not limited to corrections. The 3-strike law has had an adverse effect on the….....

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