3-Strikes Law

By Allan L. Dollison

Lets reform our criminal justice system, by amending the 3-strikes law.

Bold, decisive strong leadership is needed at this time. At one point most Californian's felt that passing the Three Strikes Law, would insure that murderers, rapists, and child molesters would not see our streets, endanger our children or families ever again.

No one disagrees that these type of career felons can and should be locked up forever. The problem is the insidious nature in the way the law was written. First off, the law only requires two serious or violent felonies not three. That is a mistake. It has caught numerous older Defendants who committed offenses early on in their lives, only to find them facing 25 - Life for stealing pizzas, spare tires, video tapes, having .03 grams of Marijuana, and small amounts of controlled substances. Many of these people never committed the major serious or violent felonies that the voters wanted the courts to focus on. Many of the crimes on the Three Strike list, are crimes without any injury or violence. Many are mere crimes of words. In some cases taking a weapon from a relative has been viewed as a strike.

Let us require a serious or violent injury to be classified as a strike.

The time has come for us to take a long hard look at our corrections policy. The fastest growing segment of the California Budget over the last five years has been the Department of Corrections. There are many reasons why that is the case. Those reasons have to be looked at very carefully. The lengthening of sentences has caused the state to go on a prison construction boom in the last 20 years, never before seen. Today over 318,000 Californians are in custody or on parole. The increase in prisons has swollen the employment base of prison guards. Together they have pooled there money formed a union, that has become a potently political powerful force in this state. They are now the largest campaign special interest contributor in California, bar none. They have had a vested interest in seeing that these sentence enhancement laws be passed, because it has only made their union more powerful. Let's take the politics out of Three Strikes and do what is right for California. Let's amend the law to require Three Serious or Violent felony convictions.

We should take a look at the list, and possibly consider removing those crimes where a Defendant merely uses words, or causes no injury or harm to be taken off of the list. Lets allow for the resentencing of those inmates who currently are serving 25 - Life sentences for non-violent offenses to be resentenced accordingly as if they have not gotten their Third Strike. Let's treat drug offenders. Let's not lock them up. It makes no sense to lock them up. It is cheaper to treat them. It is also the humane thing to do. Lets consider paroling early those older offenders who committed non-serious or violent offenses.

Studies have shown that those individuals do not pose a substantial risk to society. Even criminals retire. Let us consider the use of medicine and psychiatry to address problems and find those offenders who may pose a risk to society. Currently our prisons have become massive mental wards. Providing mental health care is cheaper than locking them up, at $30,000 per year. These are tough issues. My solutions are drastic and in some ways revolutionary. Some will attack them as being soft on crime. They are not. It is a recognition that when there is not enough resources to go around, we have to watch what we spend. Why is that such a radical concept? Working families do it every day. Our government needs to as well.

If you read this, and agree please respond with your thoughts. There is a link on the web page for you to do that. If you don't agree, then please respond as well. Lets all put our heads together, and come up with a solution as to how we can protect society from those who we need to be protected from. (And don't let my comments fool you. There are a whole bunch of those folks. They are not all 318,000, though!) However, we also need to address those problems with the people that just need help. In the long run, providing them with help will make a whole lot more sense.