Striking Three Strikes?

Today’s LA Times Magazine has this (very long) article about Proposition 66, the initiative on the November ballot to amend California’s Three Strikes law. The article is well worth the time it takes to read; there is a wealth of information and insights about the realities of the law itself and about the politics surrounding efforts to change the law. Relatedly, Jonathan Soglin over at Criminal Appeal has collected here an array of recent newpaper articles on Proposition 66.

Interestingly, and not surprisingly, there are a number of websites and web resources which provide a lot of (competing) information about California’s Three Strikes laws and the Proposition 66 amendment effort. For example, here is one site called Restore Three Strikes, and here is a competing site called No On 66. In addition, I recently was informed that the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) will soon release a new report entitled “Three Strikes and You’re Out: An Examination of the Impact of Strike Laws 10 years after their Enactment,” which asserts that the majority of people incarcerated under three strikes laws are “non-violent” offenders and that states without Three Strikes laws actually saw greater decreases in violent crimes than those with Three Strikes laws. JPI, which describes itself as “a nonprofit research and public policy organization dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems,” has done a lot of previous important and valuable work on three strikes laws and on other issues relating to the scope of imprisonment (see, e.g., publications available here and here).

In my mind, the debate over Proposition 66 reflects many aspects of the current, often confused, public dialogue over crime and punishment. Everyone wants violent, repeat offenders put away for a long time, and but the broad reach (and great expense) of California’s Three Strikes law raises questions about the justice and efficacy of its approach to achieving that goal. How politicians and the public come to view and frame these issues in the context of Proposition 66, and the ultimate fate of using “direct democracy” to cut back on a harsh mandatory sentencing law, may well provide important insights into the the future of sentencing reform and its relationship to concepts of democracy (a topic I recently discussed here). Stay tuned.