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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:14 am
Time: 2:14 am
Results for three strikes legislation (california)
1 results foundAuthor: Males, Mike Title: Striking Out: California’s “Three Strikes And You’re Out” Law Has Not Reduced Violent Crime. A 2011 Update. Summary: In March 1999, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) released a report through the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) that investigated the effects of the “Three Strikes” Law. It noted, In the wake of the widely publicized 1993 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, California Governor Pete Wilson signed into law on March 7, 1994, one of the most punitive sentencing statutes in recent history. The law was dubbed “Three Strikes and You’re Out” because of its provision requiring 25-years-to-life prison terms for defendants convicted of any felony (or misdemeanor such as petty theft reclassified as a felony) after having previously been convicted of two specified “serious” or “violent” felonies. The law was affirmed by three-fourths of California voters through a statewide initiative in November of that year. The Three Strikes law promised to reduce violent crime by putting repeat violent offenders behind bars for life. The severe nature of the law was intended to maximize the criminal justice system’s deterrent and selective incapacitation effect. Under deterrence theory, individuals are dissuaded from criminal activity through the threat of state-imposed penalties. Selective incapacitation suggests that crime can be reduced by incapacitating the small group of repeat offenders who are responsible for a large portion of serious crime. As of December 31, 2010, 40,998 Californians were behind bars for strike offenses, including 8,727 for third strikes. While the second strike population in prisons actually declined over the 1999-2010 period, the third strike population, due to very lengthy sentences, nearly doubled. At an average of $46,700 per inmate per year, a 25-year sentence costs the State $1.1 million per inmate; a life sentence, assuming incarceration at age 43 (the average third strike commitment age) and death at 82 (the average life expectancy for a male alive at age 43) costs $1.8 million per inmate, even without adding the higher medical costs of aged prisoners. Thus, just imprisoning the current third-strike population will cost taxpayers at least $10 billion in 2010 dollars over the next 25 years. Despite its high costs, candidates of both major parties have credited the “Three-Strikes” law with reducing crime in California. However, national crime trends show that crime has been dropping in every region regardless of incarceration practices since the early 1990s. An earlier JPI study found that California’s declining crime rates were no different than in states without a Three Strikes law, while a CJCJ study found California counties that used the law the least had reductions in crime slightly larger than counties that used the law the most. Other early research found similar results, while some other studies have disagreed, and other recent reviews such as by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law have found only mixed results. The crime control impact of the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law is an important subject to analyze. Under deterrence and incapacitation theories, counties that most heavily used the “Three Strikes” law, thereby removing larger proportions of their criminal population from public, should experience greater crime declines than more lenient counties. Because of its broad applications and disparate enforcement, California’s “Three Strikes” law provides a rare opportunity to analyze these theories. This report updates the 1999 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice report using 2009 and 2010 data to examine crime trends in California counties with widely varying “Three Strikes” imprisonment levels. Details: San Francisco: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 2011. 11p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Brief: Accessed May 17, 2011 at: http://www.cjcj.org/files/Striking_Out_Californias_Three_Strikes_And_Youre_Out_Law_Has_Not_Reduced_Violent_Crime.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.cjcj.org/files/Striking_Out_Californias_Three_Strikes_And_Youre_Out_Law_Has_Not_Reduced_Violent_Crime.pdf Shelf Number: 121736 Keywords: DeterrenceLife SentenceSentencingThree Strikes Legislation (California)Violent Crime |