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Three Strikes Law Case Study

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The effects of the Three Strikes Law on California’s economy were evident through the significant costs that were required to house inmates for the duration of the sentences imposed by the law. As of 2009, the California Department of Corrections estimated those costs to have been 19.2 billion dollars (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 2009). From 1985 to 2010, California’s prison budget increased from four percent to ten percent. Meanwhile, the state’s higher education budget decreased from eleven percent to less than six percent. The health and welfare and K12 funding also decreased because of the additional funding required to house the growing number of inmates who were imprisoned under the Three Strikes Law. …show more content…

A review conducted by the National Institute of Justice concluded after comparing states with comparable laws in place to California’s Three Strikes Law that California was the only state that the implementation of the law would cause a significant increase in the prison …show more content…

However, a multivariate time series study of violent crime in California over the last fifty years indicated that decreased unemployment rates and alcohol consumption had an important impact on the drop in violent crime rates. There was no evidence to support that the Three Strikes Law had an impact in deterring violent crime (Parker, 2012). However, a comparison study conducted in 2007 measured the impact of the Three Strikes Law in regards to the likelihood of former inmates to be rearrested within the first three years of their release. The first group had been convicted of two strike offenses and the second group had been convicted of one strike offense in addition to one lesser offense. The findings concluded that the first group was seventeen percent less likely to be rearrested than the second group (Fischman,

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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

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This is the final draft of my HCP, where I had a completely new topic for my HCP. This draft is about the Three Strikes Law in New Mexico, where we had seen a lot of increase in crime rates after the Three Strikes Law was passed in 1994. This draft involves a lot of information about how the Three Strikes Law has caused an increase in crime rates every year and what kind of crimes has increased in New Mexico City. By the end of this draft, I was not completely satisfied with my final draft because I did not get a chance to review this draft as much I thought could have done it since they were some parts in the essay that were confusing to Professor Tae Sung even though I tried my best to make sure there is nothing confusing to him in my paper.

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In 2004, Proposition 66 aimed to revise the Three Strikes Law by mandating a life sentence only if the third offense was serious or violent. It also would have removed eight crimes from the serious or violent category. The voters rejected the proposition by a narrow margin. There were 47% of voters on the affirmative side of the proposition. The narrow margin of defeat for the proposition revealed that the citizens of California were largely in favor of revising the policy (Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2005).

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In 1993, twenty three states and the federal government adopted some form of the three strike law intending to target repeat offenders. The State of Washington was the first to do so; the State of California soon followed with a considerably broader version of the law. Even though, adopted versions of the three strike law vary among the states, the laws generally reduced judicial discretion by mandating severe prison sentences for third (in some instances first and second) felony convictions. 1993 was unquestionably the peak of public concern about crime and the peak of the political response to that concern, resulting in what was a unique punitive period in American history. America’s incarceration rate increase more during the 1990s than

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In the village of Holcomb, Kansas a wealthy family, the Clutters, was murdered on November 14, 1959. Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were convicted of these murders and received the death penalty. In Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood, the audience receives different viewpoints on why Dick and Perry either deserved the death penalty or not. Though the decision to sentence someone to death should be based on the truth, the truth is not always easy to define; Capote shows this through his depiction of the controversial executions of Dick Hickock and Perry Smith. Criminal punishment is an immensely ongoing controversial and societal issue in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world.

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In 1971, 1 out of 12 Americans were incarcerated. Since that time, the prisoner ratio has exponentially increased; today, that ratio is 1 out of 51. With that number continuing to rise, many problems result out of it. Prison overcrowding is a growing problem in the United States. The number of people being taken in has regressive effects on the purpose behind imprisonment.

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Mandatory Sentencing The three strikes legislation is used as a deterrent in different states. This makes sense because if someone is aware that they will receive consequences for their actions, it will make them think twice before committing another crime. “Habitual felony laws, commonly known as three strikes legislation, began in 1993 when an initiative was placed on the ballot in Washington State, mandating the punishment of life imprisonment without parole for offenders convicted for a third time of specified violent or serious felonies.”

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With the economy in the turmoil that it is in America cannot continue to support these sentencing guidelines. The Mandatory Article Sentencing declares that the laws are becoming a huge drain on the Justice Bureau’s budget, and in 2012 the United States had far beyond more people incarcerated than any other country. Most of these prisoners are low-level drug offenders sentenced under mandatory sentencing guidelines with a cost draining on American taxpayers $6.8 billion a year, as of 2012. These costs do not seem to have a ceiling and continue eating up about twenty-five percent of the federal justice system’s yearly budget.

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For the following CRJ 11 research paper, I will be discussing the three Strikes laws, the Ewing v. California case as it pertains to the three strikes law. Next, a few thoughts on the disadvantages and advantages of the Law, I will be also answering the question if the three strike law policies are unfair. I will conclude with thoughts on how mass incarceration can be cost effective on the taxpayers and communities. As well, other alternatives for adjudication which might include using the income on more productive means in the community to lower the crime rate.

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In the United States, habitual offender laws, are statutes enacted by state governments which mandates the courts to impose harsher sentences on those convicted of an offense if they have been previously convicted of two prior serious criminal offenses. What this means is that people that have been put in prison 3 times will get a harsher punishment going from whatever they 're consequence is to life in prison. I am against this law, for reasons I will talk about later. The origin of the three strikes law came from article 2 section 28 of the Montana constitution in 1998, which states the three strikes law.

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Introduction Crime, its punishment, and the legislation that decides the way in which they interact has long been a public policy concern that reaches everyone within a given society. It is the function of the judicial system to distribute punishment equitably and following the law. The four traditional goals of punishment, as defined by Connecticut General Assembly (2001), are: “deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, and rehabilitation.” However, how legislature achieves and balances these goals has changed due to the implementation of responses to changing societal influences. Mandatory minimum sentences exemplify this shift.

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In 2009, California was ordered by a federal court to reduce their overcrowded prison population by 138 percent. The state had a massive incarceration rate during the “tough on crime” era (Alternative to Incarceration in California, 2015). In 1994, California had enacted a Three Strike Law. This law allows for offenders who have been convicted of a serious felony to be sentence to a prison term twice as long if they had a prior conviction. If they had two or more prior convictions then they would be mandated to a sentence of 25 years to life (California Courts,

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The United States has a larger percent of its population incarcerated than any other country. America is responsible for a quarter of the world’s inmates, and its incarceration rate is growing exponentially. The expense generated by these overcrowded prisons cost the country a substantial amount of money every year. While people are incarcerated for several reasons, the country’s prisons are focused on punishment rather than reform, and the result is a misguided system that fails to rehabilitate criminals or discourage crime. This literature review will discuss the ineffectiveness of the United States’ criminal justice system and how mass incarceration of non-violent offenders, racial profiling, and a high rate of recidivism has become a problem.

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How Sentencing Affects the State and Federal Prison Systems The United States

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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.

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