Three Strikes Rule
Mr. Gundersen
Government and Politics AP
29 September 2013
The Three Strikes Rule
The relation of violent crimes and the idea of recidivism has always been something that has been taken into account in the legal system. As early as 1895 in the Gladstone Committee Report, habitual offenders have garnered attention in penology circles (Katkin 99). The idea of punishing recidivism is split among politicians, though, as many politicians who disagree argue that the result is too monetarily costly for the state and the state’s citizens. One of the proposed solutions to this problem is what is called the “Three Strikes Rule”. Because this is a reserved power of the states, no decision made is federal, thus there are many heated debates over …show more content…
whether it should be implemented or not. Does the Three Strikes Rule effectively stop crime, and does it perform that task cost-effectively as well? The first public attention garnered for a three-strikes plan came from the outreach by an average wedding photographer, Mike Reynolds, whose 18-year-old daughter had been killed by a violent recidivist.
On June 29, 1992, in Fresno, California, Kimber Reynolds was approached on the street by two men on a motorcycle. One of the men tried to steal her purse, and when she resisted, the other pulled a .357 Magnum out of his waistband and shot her in the side of the head. She died 26 hours later. After a couple days of searching, they found the location of the gunman, Joe Davis. Davis was a 25-year-old confirmed methamphetamine user repeatedly convicted and jailed for offenses including armed robbery, auto theft, and illegal drug usage. Davis had only been released from prison a mere 3 months before Kimber’s shooting. As police surrounded Davis’ apartment, Davis stepped out and started firing at the police, eventually being shot to death by police officers. The accomplice was found not long after. His name is Douglas Walker, a 26-year-old repeat offender as well. He plead guilty in court. Walker received the maximum sentence possible, a 9-year stint. With good behavior, though, he’d be back on the Fresno streets in only half of that time. Reynolds knew the law needed to change to protect the non-criminals in America, and so he, personally, confronted the California state legislature. His proposal was that a second-time offender faced a sentence double that of what a single-time offender would face, and a third-time offender received twenty-five years to life. It was met coldly and almost immediately quashed. Nothing new about the law arose until October 1, 1993, when a 12-year-old girl, Polly Klaas, was kidnapped from her own slumber party by 39-year-old Richard Davis, a criminal with a lengthy history of violent crime. Davis had encountered police coincidentally about two months later, and it is believed that soon after, he murdered Polly by strangulation and buried
her in a shallow, hidden grave. When Davis was arrested for violation of parole, the arresting officer recognized his face from sketches and charged him with the murder of Polly Klaas. Four days later, Davis led police to Polly’s body. In 1996, Davis was tried and convicted for first-degree murder, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and lewd act on a child. The jury returned a verdict of death; he remains on death row today. A little over three months after Polly’s body had been found, California signed into law its own Three Strikes act on March 8, 1994. Although Washington had signed their Three Strikes act into effect in 1993, California’s is viewed as the most important and most unanimous, as it passed with over a 70% acceptance percentage. Within a three-year period, twenty-four states, including Indiana, have integrated some form of a three-strikes rule into their penal system. Since 1995, none of the remaining 26 states have changed their position, though. This system of punishment has not come without its opponents and faults as well. One of the most publicized cases shedding light on the rule’s mistakes was in March 1995. Jerry Williams, a California resident, received a sentence of twenty-five years to life after stealing a piece of pizza from four children. Williams had had previous felonies of robbery and drug possession. The media latched onto this story all across the nation criticizing the new law, but none of the states changed the rule. That is, until June 20, 1996. On that day, the California Supreme Court declared that judges now had the right to use their own personal discretion on three-strikes cases, allowing softer sentences or ignorance of previous felonies. Less than a year later, Williams’ sentence was greatly reduced. Another change came in late 2000, when Proposition 36 passed. Proposition 36 required all drug possession felons to undergo drug therapy and treatment rather than prison time. Many recidivists fell under this category, and thus they were able to avoid the severity of the three-strikes rule. Strangely enough, though, only three years later, the Supreme Court supported two cases of extreme sentencing on the same day. In one case, Leandro Andrade was found guilty of stealing $150 worth of videotapes on two counts; he already had one previous conviction on his record, and so he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. The decision was upheld 5-4. On the same day, the Court upheld the sentence of Gary Ewing, a man with previous convictions who was found guilty of stealing three golf clubs. After another three years of minimal action, California State Senator Gloria Romero proposed her own bill requiring the third offense to be serious or violent for the three-strikes rule to apply. Despite Romero’s strong campaigning for the bill, it was held up in senate later that year (Brown). Since that time, no major changes have arisen for this law, but yet many opponents remain, fighting constantly. One of the most common arguments against this plan is that the three-strikes rule will cost the government billions of dollars to house the estimated increase of prisoners. Many new prisons would have to be built as well. Back in 1994, the California government estimated that this plan would cost them a minimum of $2 billion yearly; they also predicted that it would cause the prison population to double within three or four years. These points were disproven after studies were done 14 years after the implementation, though. These studies showed that the overall monetary savings of the citizens of California was a total of $54 billion. Another shocking statistic was that even though the population of California has risen by 50% in 15 years, the crime rate has actually decreased 50%. It has decreased to the point that California’s current crime rate matches that of its crime rate in 1968. This graph here shows crime rates across the years for California (Legislative Analyst’s Office):
As you can see, around the time that the three-strikes rule is put into effect, all kinds of crime take a huge plummet. Although it may look less severe because of the scale of the graph, violent crimes dropped from over 1,000 per 100,000 people to almost 500 per 100,000 people. The most impactful point from this graph, though, is that even property crimes took an enormous down-turn, most likely from the threat of a third strike. There have been reports, though, that the three-strikes rule has no actual effect on the crime rate. Robert Nash Parker, a sociology professor at the University of California, determined that crime has been simply decreasing at the same rate in every state for two decades, regardless of a three-strikes rule implemented or not. Parker himself said, “There is not a single shred of scientific evidence, research or data to show that three strikes caused a 100 percent decline in violence in California or elsewhere in the last 20 years” (University of California). He also notes that this trend of decreasing violence started two years prior to the three strikes law. This idea is represented in this graph, a chart of Oregon’s crime rate; Oregon does not have any three strikes rule in place.
As you can see with this particular graph, the number of violent crimes takes a large dip in the mid-1990’s, just like California. Oregon’s crime rate rolls back to almost that of what it was in 1975. This is only one of the twenty-six states that experienced crime decline despite never introducing the three-strikes plan. This graph shows that more than just one law can be attributed to this monumental change in crime. Many speculate whether the law can be attributed at all. There is more than just this opposition, though. As aforementioned, another of the biggest complaints with this plan was and is the cost of it. Although estimates of total cost of the plan were astronomical before, did it really turn out the opposite way? A misleading factor is that when California presented its total cost to the public after 15 or so years, it included taking out the cost of predicted crime that would’ve happened. This idea would be sound and fair if the crime drop was caused by the law, but because that is up for speculation, the public actually saving money is still a debated issue. The Justice Policy Institute did an extensive research procedure on the costs of the three-strikes law, especially dealing with non-violent third strikes. The study showed that only 43% of third strikes were actually considered violent offenses; typically, they were drug violations or burglary. The Institute reported that third strike violations are ten times more likely to be drug infractions than second-degree murder. By statistics, one of every four prisoners, a total of 42,000 inmates, are serving a third strike term. Around $8.1 billion was spent on housing these third-strikers alone, while only $3.4 billion of that money actually went to keeping violent third-strikers behind bars. Jackie Goldberg, Assemblywoman, said, “We’re filling our prisons with people who don’t belong there. You can get less time for second-degree murder than for stealing a six-pack of beer. It’s not what the public had in mind” (San Francisco Gate). The Californian tax-payers are, in actuality, paying more for crimes than they would have otherwise. More tax-payer dollars go to housing these criminals than just letting them roam the streets because of the relative innocence and lack of severity of their infractions. This is still a concept widely ignored in California. There is one universal idea agreed upon between both sides of this issue, and that is that violent and dangerous criminals must be put behind bars at all costs to protect the average society. The method of reaching this utopian goal is constantly argued over because no truly successfully plan has arisen. Although the three-strikes law arguably does best as a fear-driven incentive, it never really reaches to the issue of violent crime. Considering that a majority of crimes go unsolved doesn’t help the prevention of violent crime, either. The three-strikes law is a wave that was fueled by fear and emotion. There, in some cases, have been more negative effects from it than positive, but the future political landscape looks like nothing will change anytime soon. Maybe more amendments will be made, and this law will become more refined to the point that it starts to make a legitimate bite out of violent crime, but for the time being, that isn’t happening. Despite possible failures of impact and lack of cost-effectiveness, the three-strikes plan has enough public support that it looks clear that it is here to stay for a long time. Works Cited
Katkin, Daniel (1971-1972). "Habitual Offender Laws: A Reconsideration." Buffalo Law Review 21 (3): 99–120.
Combs, Dave. “VTS_01_1.mp4.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 26 Mar. 2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.
Brown, Tanya Ballard. “Timeline: The Evolution Of California 's Three Strikes Law.” NPR. NPR, 28 Oct. 2009. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.
University of California, Riverside. "Evidence does not support three-strikes law as crime deterrent, California study finds." ScienceDaily, 15 Oct. 2012.
San Francisco Gate. “Cost of ‘three strikes’ law.” SFGate. 5 Mar. 2004. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.
Government and Politics AP
29 September 2013
The Three Strikes Rule
The relation of violent crimes and the idea of recidivism has always been something that has been taken into account in the legal system. As early as 1895 in the Gladstone Committee Report, habitual offenders have garnered attention in penology circles (Katkin 99). The idea of punishing recidivism is split among politicians, though, as many politicians who disagree argue that the result is too monetarily costly for the state and the state’s citizens. One of the proposed solutions to this problem is what is called the “Three Strikes Rule”. Because this is a reserved power of the states, no decision made is federal, thus there are many heated debates over …show more content…
whether it should be implemented or not. Does the Three Strikes Rule effectively stop crime, and does it perform that task cost-effectively as well? The first public attention garnered for a three-strikes plan came from the outreach by an average wedding photographer, Mike Reynolds, whose 18-year-old daughter had been killed by a violent recidivist.
On June 29, 1992, in Fresno, California, Kimber Reynolds was approached on the street by two men on a motorcycle. One of the men tried to steal her purse, and when she resisted, the other pulled a .357 Magnum out of his waistband and shot her in the side of the head. She died 26 hours later. After a couple days of searching, they found the location of the gunman, Joe Davis. Davis was a 25-year-old confirmed methamphetamine user repeatedly convicted and jailed for offenses including armed robbery, auto theft, and illegal drug usage. Davis had only been released from prison a mere 3 months before Kimber’s shooting. As police surrounded Davis’ apartment, Davis stepped out and started firing at the police, eventually being shot to death by police officers. The accomplice was found not long after. His name is Douglas Walker, a 26-year-old repeat offender as well. He plead guilty in court. Walker received the maximum sentence possible, a 9-year stint. With good behavior, though, he’d be back on the Fresno streets in only half of that time. Reynolds knew the law needed to change to protect the non-criminals in America, and so he, personally, confronted the California state legislature. His proposal was that a second-time offender faced a sentence double that of what a single-time offender would face, and a third-time offender received twenty-five years to life. It was met coldly and almost immediately quashed. Nothing new about the law arose until October 1, 1993, when a 12-year-old girl, Polly Klaas, was kidnapped from her own slumber party by 39-year-old Richard Davis, a criminal with a lengthy history of violent crime. Davis had encountered police coincidentally about two months later, and it is believed that soon after, he murdered Polly by strangulation and buried
her in a shallow, hidden grave. When Davis was arrested for violation of parole, the arresting officer recognized his face from sketches and charged him with the murder of Polly Klaas. Four days later, Davis led police to Polly’s body. In 1996, Davis was tried and convicted for first-degree murder, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, and lewd act on a child. The jury returned a verdict of death; he remains on death row today. A little over three months after Polly’s body had been found, California signed into law its own Three Strikes act on March 8, 1994. Although Washington had signed their Three Strikes act into effect in 1993, California’s is viewed as the most important and most unanimous, as it passed with over a 70% acceptance percentage. Within a three-year period, twenty-four states, including Indiana, have integrated some form of a three-strikes rule into their penal system. Since 1995, none of the remaining 26 states have changed their position, though. This system of punishment has not come without its opponents and faults as well. One of the most publicized cases shedding light on the rule’s mistakes was in March 1995. Jerry Williams, a California resident, received a sentence of twenty-five years to life after stealing a piece of pizza from four children. Williams had had previous felonies of robbery and drug possession. The media latched onto this story all across the nation criticizing the new law, but none of the states changed the rule. That is, until June 20, 1996. On that day, the California Supreme Court declared that judges now had the right to use their own personal discretion on three-strikes cases, allowing softer sentences or ignorance of previous felonies. Less than a year later, Williams’ sentence was greatly reduced. Another change came in late 2000, when Proposition 36 passed. Proposition 36 required all drug possession felons to undergo drug therapy and treatment rather than prison time. Many recidivists fell under this category, and thus they were able to avoid the severity of the three-strikes rule. Strangely enough, though, only three years later, the Supreme Court supported two cases of extreme sentencing on the same day. In one case, Leandro Andrade was found guilty of stealing $150 worth of videotapes on two counts; he already had one previous conviction on his record, and so he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. The decision was upheld 5-4. On the same day, the Court upheld the sentence of Gary Ewing, a man with previous convictions who was found guilty of stealing three golf clubs. After another three years of minimal action, California State Senator Gloria Romero proposed her own bill requiring the third offense to be serious or violent for the three-strikes rule to apply. Despite Romero’s strong campaigning for the bill, it was held up in senate later that year (Brown). Since that time, no major changes have arisen for this law, but yet many opponents remain, fighting constantly. One of the most common arguments against this plan is that the three-strikes rule will cost the government billions of dollars to house the estimated increase of prisoners. Many new prisons would have to be built as well. Back in 1994, the California government estimated that this plan would cost them a minimum of $2 billion yearly; they also predicted that it would cause the prison population to double within three or four years. These points were disproven after studies were done 14 years after the implementation, though. These studies showed that the overall monetary savings of the citizens of California was a total of $54 billion. Another shocking statistic was that even though the population of California has risen by 50% in 15 years, the crime rate has actually decreased 50%. It has decreased to the point that California’s current crime rate matches that of its crime rate in 1968. This graph here shows crime rates across the years for California (Legislative Analyst’s Office):
As you can see, around the time that the three-strikes rule is put into effect, all kinds of crime take a huge plummet. Although it may look less severe because of the scale of the graph, violent crimes dropped from over 1,000 per 100,000 people to almost 500 per 100,000 people. The most impactful point from this graph, though, is that even property crimes took an enormous down-turn, most likely from the threat of a third strike. There have been reports, though, that the three-strikes rule has no actual effect on the crime rate. Robert Nash Parker, a sociology professor at the University of California, determined that crime has been simply decreasing at the same rate in every state for two decades, regardless of a three-strikes rule implemented or not. Parker himself said, “There is not a single shred of scientific evidence, research or data to show that three strikes caused a 100 percent decline in violence in California or elsewhere in the last 20 years” (University of California). He also notes that this trend of decreasing violence started two years prior to the three strikes law. This idea is represented in this graph, a chart of Oregon’s crime rate; Oregon does not have any three strikes rule in place.
As you can see with this particular graph, the number of violent crimes takes a large dip in the mid-1990’s, just like California. Oregon’s crime rate rolls back to almost that of what it was in 1975. This is only one of the twenty-six states that experienced crime decline despite never introducing the three-strikes plan. This graph shows that more than just one law can be attributed to this monumental change in crime. Many speculate whether the law can be attributed at all. There is more than just this opposition, though. As aforementioned, another of the biggest complaints with this plan was and is the cost of it. Although estimates of total cost of the plan were astronomical before, did it really turn out the opposite way? A misleading factor is that when California presented its total cost to the public after 15 or so years, it included taking out the cost of predicted crime that would’ve happened. This idea would be sound and fair if the crime drop was caused by the law, but because that is up for speculation, the public actually saving money is still a debated issue. The Justice Policy Institute did an extensive research procedure on the costs of the three-strikes law, especially dealing with non-violent third strikes. The study showed that only 43% of third strikes were actually considered violent offenses; typically, they were drug violations or burglary. The Institute reported that third strike violations are ten times more likely to be drug infractions than second-degree murder. By statistics, one of every four prisoners, a total of 42,000 inmates, are serving a third strike term. Around $8.1 billion was spent on housing these third-strikers alone, while only $3.4 billion of that money actually went to keeping violent third-strikers behind bars. Jackie Goldberg, Assemblywoman, said, “We’re filling our prisons with people who don’t belong there. You can get less time for second-degree murder than for stealing a six-pack of beer. It’s not what the public had in mind” (San Francisco Gate). The Californian tax-payers are, in actuality, paying more for crimes than they would have otherwise. More tax-payer dollars go to housing these criminals than just letting them roam the streets because of the relative innocence and lack of severity of their infractions. This is still a concept widely ignored in California. There is one universal idea agreed upon between both sides of this issue, and that is that violent and dangerous criminals must be put behind bars at all costs to protect the average society. The method of reaching this utopian goal is constantly argued over because no truly successfully plan has arisen. Although the three-strikes law arguably does best as a fear-driven incentive, it never really reaches to the issue of violent crime. Considering that a majority of crimes go unsolved doesn’t help the prevention of violent crime, either. The three-strikes law is a wave that was fueled by fear and emotion. There, in some cases, have been more negative effects from it than positive, but the future political landscape looks like nothing will change anytime soon. Maybe more amendments will be made, and this law will become more refined to the point that it starts to make a legitimate bite out of violent crime, but for the time being, that isn’t happening. Despite possible failures of impact and lack of cost-effectiveness, the three-strikes plan has enough public support that it looks clear that it is here to stay for a long time. Works Cited
Katkin, Daniel (1971-1972). "Habitual Offender Laws: A Reconsideration." Buffalo Law Review 21 (3): 99–120.
Combs, Dave. “VTS_01_1.mp4.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 26 Mar. 2011. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.
Brown, Tanya Ballard. “Timeline: The Evolution Of California 's Three Strikes Law.” NPR. NPR, 28 Oct. 2009. Web. 29 Sept. 2013.
University of California, Riverside. "Evidence does not support three-strikes law as crime deterrent, California study finds." ScienceDaily, 15 Oct. 2012.
San Francisco Gate. “Cost of ‘three strikes’ law.” SFGate. 5 Mar. 2004. Web. 30 Sept. 2013.