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Three strikes law ethics
Three strikes law ethics
Three strikes law ethics
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In the spring of 1994, California’s Three Strikes was signed into law. It passed with the support of 72 percent of the state’s voters. (Gladwell 236) This law became highly controversial, and on November 6, 2012, voters passed Proposition 36, which amended the law with two primary provisions. Through the controversy, we must take a minute to remember how this law came to be. Mike Reynolds lost his daughter in June of 1992 to murder.
The Three Strikes law is a way to ensure justice and to stop criminals from committing more crimes. According to Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center's Public Safety
“The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984” The article, “The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984” (2015), written by Eric Girault, persuades the audience that the enactment of the law did not reduce crime in societies, but was misappropriated, which caused a negative impact on families and their communities. Girault describes this by sharing his personal anecdote on receiving a harsh prison sentence for a non-violent crime as a first time offender. He uses trustworthy resources in order to substantiate his claim. Girault’s intended audience for this piece of writing is the general public, specifically those that lack knowledge of the law and its due process.
In the decades following the civil war, the United States experienced rapid growth, leading to the development of multiple industries. All United States industries such as the agricultural industry, the railroad industry, the textile industry, and the oil industry had experienced rapid and excessive growth. This seemingly positive and rapid growth meant that the second half of the nineteenth century was to be filled with turbulence and defined by a national crisis. The United States was filled with turbulence during the 1890s with the consequential Panic of 1893, the rise of agrarian dissent and the Populist Movement; and widespread unemployment followed by significant and harsh violent labor strikes.
California’s Three Strikes Law was implemented in order to improve public safety. The murders of Polly Klaas and Kimber Reynolds caused the citizens of California to request a reactive measure in order to improve California’s preventive safety measures. Polly Klaas and Kimber Reynolds were both murdered by repeat offenders. The murders resulted in a public outcry and a petition was started in order to improve the sentencing requirements for repeat offenders (Skelton, 1993). The Three Strikes Law became a source of controversy due to the fact that many people argued that the law was in violation of the Eighth Amendment, which states that, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
Within that statistic, most of the imprisoned are non-violent offenders. The problem starts with Arizona’s mandatory imprisonment laws. Research highlights that, “under Arizona's mandatory sentencing system, non-violent offenders make up the majority of state prisoners” (Greene). However, the mandatory sentencing does not just affect Arizona’s population. All across America, mandatory sentencing laws are forcing people to be put into prisons without a second thought.
Three-Strikes Law It is my intention to establish a relationship between the three strikes law and retention rates of prisoners incarcerated for low level offenses. Before I begin to discuss the three-strikes law, it is imperative that I give some background information on sentencing guidelines. During the 1970 's the incarceration sentences imposed were indeterminate, meaning the judge had the discretion to sentence an offender on a case by case basis and sentencing a person to state prison or county jail was supposed to be to rehabilitate that person so he/she could re-enter society. Often time’s prisoners were sentenced to different amounts of time for similar offenses.
Next next loop hole to keep African Americans was the three strike rule created by Bill Clinton which states that if a person committed three major crimes their prison sentence increases to a life sentence . At this point the rate of blacks in prison was six time higher than whites because of the life sentence . Bill and his stated in a press conference that drugs were turning African Americans in wild animals yet they were helping the people get addicted to them. Prisons were becoming overcrowded where the system could not house that many people so they had to be
The maximum length is set by legislators and the judge imposes the length of the sentence up to the maximum. Mandatory sentences are set by legislators instead of judges. Mandatory sentences set a penalty for certain crimes that is the standard for all offenders convicted of that crime. I do not believe three-strike laws should be implemented across
So this three strike thing is saying that if you get three felony convictions you will earn a life sentence. The Clintons were also involved with a cocaine ring in mena arkansas. Teenage girls were drugged and raped at their parties. Two little boys were killed in mena at the site bags of cocaine were loaded and unloaded 2 little boys were murdered there.
Before the three strike law there was a lot of crimes committed on a felony level. But when the three strike law was reinforced the crime level decreased. But who pays for each prison system. That 's right the taxpayers it became expensive now that jails are overpopulated. Although crime has decreased the cost of paying taxes has increased and not affected the taxpayers.
How Sentencing Affects the State and Federal Prison Systems The United States
In 1972, former President Richard Nixon made his infamous statements regarding crime and drug abuse. In this speech, he declared a war on crime and drugs and intended to decrease the number of people using drugs and the amount of crimes that were committed. Since this declaration, incarceration rates in the U.S. have gone up by 500%, even though the amount of crime happening has gone down. One of the reasons why I feel our rates have risen, is because sometimes, we put people in jail when they don’t need to be there in the first place.
During the 1990s, there are tough crimes that increase the prison's population and length of prison sentencing. For example, former attorney General Dan Lungren explained that violent crimes in California 26.9 percent and 30.8 percent in six major crime categories after passing the Three Strike law (Vitiello, 2002). Three Strike law has an incapacitation effect. The number of third striker and second striker decline every year from 1996 through 2003 (Goodno, 2007). However, mandatory minimum associated with drug crimes are different from other
Through the decades, crime and crime control have been analyzed in an attempt to find the causes of crime and decide how to combat them. The United States showed an increase in their prison population in the 1970s when the country turned towards a more punitive justice system. Referred to as just deserts theory of crime, the aim is to inflict as much pain on the offender through harsh prison sentences, in hopes to cause as much pain as the crime they committed. The worse the crime is, the worse the punishment the criminal will endure. The issue surrounding just deserts theory is the vast amount of offenders who return to prison after being released, also known as the recidivism rate.