Three Strikes Laws

Have “three-strikes laws been effective and should they be continued?

Three-strikes laws have proven themselves to be ineffective at preventing crime, costly for taxpayers and have overwhelmed the judicial system. According to U.S. District Court Judge Terry Hatter, the three-strikes is part of a cycle where politicians speak out against “soft-hearted judges” and seek to limit the discretion they exercise over the sentencing process (as cited by Marshall, 2002, p. 419). Over the past twenty years, mandatory sentencing laws have only continued to increase the number of persons imprisoned; in the ten year period from 1990 to 2000, the U.S. saw a dramatic rise in state prison populations and a doubling of inmates in federal prison (Marshall, 2002,

Three-strikes laws have been ineffective in virtually all areas they sought to address given that they violate the Eight Amendment, have failed to deter crime, placed an enormous financial burden on state budgets and have produced a sizeable ripple effect throughout the justice system that can only be resolved by the repeal of all three-strikes laws.

THREE STRIKES LAWS VIOLATE THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT

The mandated sentencing for repeat offenders under recidivism statutes, such as the three-strikes laws, are a violation of the Eighth Amendment protecting citizens from cruel and unusual punishment. In Solem v. Helm, the Supreme Court established for the first time that sentences must be proportional to the crime committed (Mills, 1983, p. 1372). This prior decision has since been modified by the Court on numerous occasions. In the case of Ewing v. California, the Court held that California’s three-strikes laws are constitutional (U.S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 2002, p. 11). Justice Scalia wrote that “[I]t becomes difficult even to speak intelligently of ‘proportionality,’ once

Proponents of the three-strikes laws will suggest that crime has fallen drastically in California since their implementation. According to an aide of State Senate George Runner of California’s 17th District, the law has helped to bring about a drastic reduction of crime since the law’s passage citing that California fell on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s crime index between 1994 and 1999 (C. Fennessey, personal communication, February 10, 2009). Given that criminal activity is a complex social problem, it is unlikely that California’s three-strikes law alone can possibly be responsible for a massive reduction in crime. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [BJS] (2009), the time period of 1994 to 1999 saw a decline in crime rates across many U.S. states, not just California (table: violent crime rate). The reduction of crime rates during these years could be attributed to the relative economic prosperity that characterized the period of the 1990s rather than the effectiveness of California’s law. In order to fully negate the supposed effects of three-strikes, California can be contrasted with other large population states. Both Texas and New York have large populations similar to that of California and neither state has enacted a three-strikes type of legislation (Reynolds, 2008,