Argument Against Three Strikes

Three strikes raises important questions about how sentencing laws need to achieve public safety. How are such laws made? Who do they target? And why did Michael Reynolds and Mark Klaas start out as allies and end up as bitter political rivals.

Over the last two decades (1980-2000), the US prison population has increased 450%. California has led the nation in prison growth since the early 1980s, and it incarcerated a higher percentage of its population than any nation on earth by 1994. The same year California enacted a controversial sentencing law that will drive prison growth for decades to come. This is the story of that law.

Mark Klaas: It starts with a phone call that Polly's been kidnapped and everything changed. Then things changed
That's what we did in February of 1994. But from that point on I was going more and more towards this piece of legislation called the rainy bill and from that point on Gov. Wilson seem to be going more and more towards three strikes to the point where within weeks he totally embraced three strikes.

Mike Reynolds: it's interesting to see what happens to politicians once it's for sure that the legislation is going to pass. Many times even though they would not ever vote for this on a good day if it's going to go down what they will do is change their vote over so it looks like they voted on the right side of the issue, on the winning side of an
She's been cited over and over again and I think she liked the chance to speak for herself I think is just like a chance to live she just like a chance to be.

Mark Klaas: it happens to the best of us we all get duped. What we can do once we have been had is we can admit that and we can do whatever we can to correct it. We did everything we could to correct it. And they were trying to use this marvelous little person and try to have her stand for putting everyone in jail. Polly would've never stood for it. we wanted to reestablish Polly’s image as someone who stood for truth and justice and not someone who stood for for the big lie the big vengeance. We then worked together as a team to do the no on three strikes campaign.

I felt as the philosophical opposition I could never say die I wasn't willing to say that die.

Leo McElroy campaign consultant: my concern was to get a strongly articulated point of view that might somewhere down the line affect public policy enough to enable us to make changes in this and if we do nothing more than to say to people may be this is a mistake maybe there's something here we that we ought to look at maybe this isn't really the greatest thing since sliced bread then we would have accomplished