"Three Strikes and You're Out!” you think you would be hearing that phrase at a baseball game when a player has struck out but the phrase has been used as a metaphor for the three strikes law in California. It is a law that sentences repeated offenders, of serious or violent crimes, to twenty-five to life in prison. Although it seems desirable to put repeated offenders in prison, they are convicted even for petty crimes. It sentences an offender, whose first strike was a serious or violent crime, to serve a double sentence if the second crime is also serious or violent. The most controversial part of this law is that the third crime can be any crime, even misdemeanors, can “strike” out repeated offender because of their past felonies even though they have paid their debt to society for their past crimes.
California needs to give fair and equal punishment, and should dispense sentences on the basis of someone’s current crime and not what they have done in the past. The three strike law doesn’t follow through with the eighth amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. This law was made with great intentions but it is affecting some people in negative ways.
The law was established in 1994, and since then people have been affected or have seen many of its flaws. Many issues arose with concerns about overcrowding, overspending, and the disproportionate amount of minorities that are been put away because of this law. Some of the issues have led many to believe it is dispensing unfair justice. According to Chauncey Bailey, these concerns led to proposition 66 in 2004 which would weaken the three strikes law. The proposition was turned down due to the public’s vote. Many were led to believe that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s...
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...tion of California's Three Strikes Law." Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 6.2 (2008): 83-102. Print.
Ehlers, Scott, Vincent Schiraldi, and Eric Lotke. "Racial Divide: An Examination of the Impact of California's Three Strikes Law on African Americans and Latinos." Justice Policy Institute (2004): 1-22. Justice Policy Institute. Oct. 2004. Web. 13 July 2011.
Schafer, John R. "The Deterrent Effect of Three Strikes Law." FBI Law Enforcement
Bulletin 68.4 (1999): 6. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 12 June 2011.
Schiraldi, Vincent, Jason Ziedenberg, and Eric Lotke. "An Examination Impact of 3-strikes Laws 10 Years after Its Enactment." Justice Policy Institute. 10 Sept. 2004. Web. 15 July 2011.
Stolzenberg, Lisa, and Stewart J. D'Alessio. "`Three Strikes and You're Out': The Impact of California's." Crime & Delinquency 43.4 (1997): 457. Print.
The US Justice Department statistics 2003 and onwards demonstrates significant disproportion in the incarceration rate of minority African American and Hispanic men between the ages of 25 and 29 years as compared to the rate associated with White men of the same age. Bell (2007), proposes that as minority groups grow in numbers within the dominant group they will experience greater equality. However, rate of incarceration among minority males remains alarmingly high and as compared to their White counterparts. As with health care there are racial disparities that will influence outcomes when an individual is brought before the criminal courts. Additionally, there is significant correlation between a person’s level of education and the likelihood of his involvement in criminal activities. Studies and statistics have shown that among male high school dropouts there is high incidence of unemployment, low income and rate of illicit drug use as compared to men with degrees from four year colleges. Further to this, although the rate of school dropout and even arrest is not significantly different across the race lines, literature alludes that African American men have a higher rate of conviction for the same crime committed.
Seigal, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
The assumption that all three-time offenders are incorrigible criminals is an oversimplification of a more complex problem. Three-strikes is based on this assumption that a few extreme cases are representative of all criminals. Mimi Silbert points...
The work by Victor M. Rios entitled Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness depict ways in which policing and incarceration affect inequalities that exist in society. In this body of work I will draw on specific examples from the works of Victor M. Rios and Michelle Alexander to fulfill the tasks of this project. Over the course of the semester and by means of supplemental readings, a few key points are highlighted: how race and gender inequalities correlate to policing and incarceration, how laws marginalize specific groups, and lastly how policing and incarceration perpetuate the very inequalities that exist within American society.
Officially known as Habitual offender laws; “Three Strikes” laws have become common place in 29 states(Chern) within the United States and the Federal Court system; these laws have been designed to counter criminal recidivism by incapacitation through the prison system. The idea behind the laws were to maximize the criminal justice systems deterrent and selective incapacitation effect, under this deterrence theory individuals would be dissuaded from committing criminal activity by the threat of state imposed incarceration. Californians voted in the “three strikes” law (proposition 184) on March 7 1994 by a 72% vote with the intention of reducing crime by targeting serious repeat offenders with long term incarceration thereby eliminating the ability to commit another offense.
The majority of our prison population is made up of African Americans of low social and economic classes, who come from low income houses and have low levels of education. The chapter also discusses the amount of money the United States loses yearly due to white collar crime as compared to the cost of violent crime. Another main point was the factors that make it more likely for a poor person to be incarcerated, such as the difficulty they would have in accessing adequate legal counsel and their inability to pay bail. This chapter addresses the inequality of sentencing in regards to race, it supplies us with NCVS data that shows less than one-fourth of assailants are perceived as black even though they are arrested at a much higher rate. In addition to African Americans being more likely to be charged with a crime, they are also more likely to receive harsher punishments for the same crimes- which can be seen in the crack/cocaine disparities. These harsher punishments are also shown in the higher rates of African Americans sentenced to
The majority of prisoners incarcerated in America are non-violent offenders. This is due mainly to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which is a method of prosecution that gives offenders a set amount of prison time for a crime they commit if it falls under one of these laws, regardless of their individual case analysis. These laws began in the 1980s, when the use of illegal drugs was hitting an all time high (Conyers 379). The United States began enacting legislature that called for minimum sentencing in an effort to combat this “war on drugs.” Many of these laws give long sentences to first time offenders (Conyers). The “three strikes” law states that people convicted of drug crimes on three separate occasions can face life in prison. These laws were passed for political gain, as the American public was swept into the belief that the laws would do nothing other than help end the rampant drug crimes in the country. The laws are still in effect today, and have not succeeded to discourage people from using drugs. Almost fifty percent...
Starting in 1970s, there has been an upward adjustment to sentencing making punishment more punitive and sentencing guidelines more strict. Martinson's (1974) meta-analyzies reviewed over 200 studies and concluded that nothing works in terms of rehabilitating prisoners. Rehabilitating efforts were discontinued. The War on Drugs campaign in 1970s incarcerated thousands of non-violent drug offenders into the system. In 1865, 34.3% of prison population were imprisoned for drug violation. By 1995, the percentage grew to 59.9% (figure 4.1, 104). Legislation policies like the Third Strikes laws of 1994 have further the severity of sentencing. The shift from rehabilitation to human warehouse marks the end of an era of trying to reform individuals and the beginnings of locking inmates without preparation of their release. Along with the reform in the 1970s, prosecutors are given more discretion at the expense of judges. Prosecutors are often pressure to be tough on crime by the socie...
Because these changes in sentencing policy have created greater prison populations, laws like the Three Strike Policy have parole officers with a heavier burden. This increased work load transformed the focus of parole supervisors from rehabilitation of ex offenders, to law enforcement. (Travis 241) New modes of surveillance were introduced and by 1997, the rate of successful reentry was at a low of 44%— successful reintegration back into society was not the norm for most individuals. (Austin
Race and Ethnicity on Sentence Outcomes Under Different Sentencing Systems. Crime & Delinquency, 59(1), 87-114.
...King, R., and Mauer, M., (2007). The Sentencing Project. Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity. Retrieved from http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_stateratesofincbyraceandethnicity.pdf
Today there is a growing awareness of repeat offenders among society in reference to crime. Starting around 1980 there was noticeable increase in crime rates in the U.S.. In many of these cases it was noted that these individuals were in fact repeat offenders. So, on March 7, 1994 California enacted the Three-Strikes and You’re Out Law. This laws and other laws like it are currently being utilized today all around the Untied States. This law was first backed by victim’s rights advocates in the state to target habitual offenders. The reason California holds the most importance on this law is due to the fact that it has the largest criminal justice system in America, and it has the most controversy surrounding this law in particular.(Auerhahn, p.55)
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
Neubauer, D. W., & Fradella, H. F. (2011). America’s courts and the criminal justice system (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Social Science Research, 38, 717-731. http://journals2.scholarsportal.info.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/tmp/9506051508484483171.pdf. Nielsen, A. L., & Martinez, R. (2011). Nationality, immigrant groups, and arrests. Examining the diversity of arrests for urban violent crime.