Terrible Price For the Hopelessly
Flawed 'Three Strikes' Law
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The moment The
Sentencing Project released its recent report that flatly says "three
strikes"
laws do nothing to reduce violent crime, California State Secretary Bill Jones
screamed
foul. Jones, who co-wrote and helped push a three strikes bill through the
California Assembly
in 1994 that became the model for similar three strikes laws in 25
other
states, vigorously defended the law. He said the crime rate in California
has
plunged
faster and more drastically than the rates in other states, and that the law is
the
major
reason for the big drop.
Jones is dead wrong.
In New
York, which has no three strikes law, the crime rate
has plunged just as sharply
as
California's rate. In Massachusetts,
New Jersey, and Washington,
D.C., which also
have
no three strikes law, crime rates have plunged almost as steeply as California's
rate.
In the 25 other
states that have three strikes laws, none of whom use them anywhere
near
as extensively as California,
crime rates have also dropped. Even in California,
the
odds
are that most of the 50,000 felons jailed under the law probably would have
wound
up behind bars anyway. In the three years following passage of the law, the
crime
rate in the state steadily fell.
It dropped because
of an aging population, the state's improved job and business
climate,
the expansion of community policing programs, and more effective youth and
adult
drug counseling and treatment programs.
Still, if the
present lock-'em-up forever trend continues,
thousands of three strike
offenders
will continue to be herded into bulging jail cells. The majority of them will
be
Latinos and
African-Americans, and they will be jailed mostly for non-violent crimes
such
as drug offenses or petty theft.
And taxpayers will
be forced to spend billions more to feed, house and provide medical
care
for them as they wile away decades in prison. But neither the terrifying cost
or the
gaping
racial warp in the law will do much to push the public to vote out three
strikes, or
politicians
to modify the law.
Every attempt to
dump or change the law in California
and other states has failed
miserably.
And there are two reasons why. The first is that much of the public is scared
stiff
of crime. They are not reassured by the cheerful reports, studies and
government
statistics
that show crime in California and
the nation has dropped. Crime-any
crime-causes
shivers of rage and trauma in most people. Nearly everyone can tell a
story
of someone whose house was broken into, whose purse was snatched, car stolen,
or
was assaulted. If they don't have a personal story to tell about crime, the
nightly
newscasts
gladly hand them one by spoon-feeding the public a steady diet of car
jackings, rapes, murders and fast and slow car
chases.
The second reason
three strikes is, for the moment, safe is that politicians obsessively
check
the opinion polls. They know that there is no detectable swing in public
sentiment
toward
modifying, let alone eliminating, the three strikes law. Few politicians will
run the
risk
of being tagged as soft on crime by calling for reform or elimination of the
law. Such
a
call is regarded as a political death knell come election time. Even the widely
publicized
appeal in California a few years
ago of Marc Klaas, the father of Polly Klaas
(whose
murder ignited public furor and propelled the passage of the three strikes law)
to
apply
three strikes only to violent criminals fell on deaf public ears.
This was the right
person to make the pitch. The three strikes law is supposed to apply
exclusively
to violent criminals, and if it must stay on the books, it should still only
apply
to
them. But even this logical, but tepid reform, would face rough sledding. Crime
is
crime
to much of the public. Few are willing to make any fine distinctions between
someone
who robs a bank or sells or possesses a small amount of cocaine. The
perception
is that the cocaine dealer or user today could be the bank robber or
murderer
tomorrow-better to get them off the streets before that happens.
These are the
towering obstacles that prevent a much-needed overhaul of the law. Yet
three
strike enthusiasts and state officials sooner or later must confront a terrible
reality.
Three strikes
needlessly imprisons thousands of persons who commit
petty crimes. For a
fraction
of the cost of preserving three strikes, they could be better helped by more
drug
treatment
and job and skills training programs. But, worst of all, the law criminalizes a
generation
of young Black and Latino males. This is much too steep a price to pay for
keeping
a hopelessly flawed law on the books.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist and the president of the
National Alliance for
Positive
Action. View its Web site: www.natalliance.org.