Monday
Sep202004
Why '3 strikes' law needs reform
Monday, September 20, 2004 at 11:00PM - Originally publishd in The San Francisco Chronicle SEPTEMBER 19, 2004, SUNDAY,
TEN YEARS is an appropriate time span to assess the effectiveness of a law. The "three strikes" sentencing law, passed by voters in 1994, is proving costly to taxpayers and unfair in its administration of justice.
It should be reformed.
Proposition 66 on the Nov. 2 ballot would change California's "three strikes" law so that the "third strike" would have to be a serious or violent crime in order to command a sentence of 25 years to life.
California's "three-strikes" law was the brainchild of Mike Reynolds, then a 43-year-old freelance wedding photographer who came up with the idea after his 18-year-old daughter Kimber was tragically shot dead in her hometown of Fresno in the summer of 1992.
Reynolds had trouble getting the state Legislature to back his proposal -- carried in Sacramento by his local Assemblyman (and current U.S. Senate candidate) Bill Jones -- until the kidnapping, rape and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.
The arrest of Polly's murderer Richard Allen Davis changed everything. The public outrage over the Klaas murder, writes Joe Domanick in "Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State" put the "three-strikes" issue "on center stage." The Legislature quickly approved the measure without a public hearing. Voters approved a subsequent initiative making it virtually impossible to overturn the law other than through another initiative. "No professional analytical input was permitted or given by criminologists and other social scientists, and no hearings to receive their expert opinions were held," writes Domanick.
Spurred by the horror of the Klaas case, the law was aimed to make sure that violent and incorrigible criminals such as Richard Allen Davis are kept behind bars. The goal was sound and noble: There should be no revolving door at prisons for repeat predators.
However, what is now clear is that the law cast far too wide a net, dragging with it thousands of "third strikers" who are now serving life sentences for third strikes that were nonviolent, and in some cases petty crimes.
As of March, 7,373 inmates were serving 25-year-to-life sentences under the law. Of those, 62 were sentenced for second degree murder. Another 42 were convicted of manslaughter. A majority -- 57 percent -- are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes, including 357 for petty theft, 235 for vehicle theft, 69 for forgery, and 678 for drug possession.
On budgetary grounds alone, California cannot afford to incarcerate people indefinitely who commit relatively minor crimes, at a cost of $31,000 a year for each inmate. The eventual costs will be far higher. Health care costs alone for aging inmates are expected to soar -- pushing annual incarceration costs to $50,000 and higher. Prisons will eventually have to set up nursing homes within prison grounds to handle the graying "three strikes" population.
Opponents of the initiative, which include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Bill Lockyer, argue that Prop. 66 would open the prison gates and flood the streets with thousands of dangerous criminals.
However, passage of this measure will not result in the automatic release of anyone. Inmates whose third-strike convictions would be downgraded by Prop. 66 would have a chance to return to court for resentencing. But California law would retain numerous provisions allowing district attorneys to seek "enhancements" of sentences based on an offender's prior records.
Another major problem with the law is that it is applied differently from county to county. In San Francisco, only 32 were sent to prison for life sentences under "three strikes," compared to Santa Clara County, which has sent 414 to prison for life.
Nor is there any compelling evidence that the "three strikes" law has contributed to a drop in crime. Crime rates have dropped across the nation, even in states which have no "three strikes" law. Some of those have seen even greater decreases in crime than in California. In San Francisco, where the "three strikes" law has been applied sparingly, violent crime rates have dropped far more significantly than in Santa Clara County, which has vigorously applied the law.
Equally troubling is the huge racial bias in how the law is applied. Thirty percent of California's prison population is black -- compared with 7 percent of the state's population. The disparities are even more in the "three strike" population, where 45 percent of such "lifers" are black. By contrast, only 25 percent of third-strike "lifers" are white, and 26 percent are Latino.
Under Prop. 66, eight felonies that now count as "serious or violent" -- and thus a strike -- will no longer be classified as such. Removed from the list of serious and violent felonies will be crimes like burglary of an unoccupied residence, nonresidential arson which does not result in significant injuries, and unintentionally inflicting personal injury while committing a felony offense, such as drunk driving.
The reclassification of these crimes is one of the reasons California's district attorneys -- including local Democrats Tom Orloff of Alameda County, Jim Fox of San Mateo County and Kamala Harris of San Francisco -- strongly oppose Prop. 66.
Orloff, Fox and Harris all advocate reform of "three strikes" -- but all believe that the definition of "nonviolent" offenses should remain narrow. For example, Harris argues that it is often hard to prove intent when bodily harm results from domestic violence. Orloff and Fox object to the measure's distinction between burglary of an occupied and unoccupied house.
Their points are well taken. It's also understandable that district attorneys would want to retain the leverage of "three strikes" when prosecuting cases and trying to secure convictions through plea bargains.
But it is important to remember that passage of Prop. 66 will not preclude prison time for any of these sentences.
On balance, the need to reform the law trumps the imperfections of the initiative. The fact that essentially the only way to reform the "three strikes" law is through the initiative process, rather than through reasoned debate in the Legislature, is yet another measure of the lack of political courage in Sacramento.
Prop. 66 restores the original intent of the "three-strikes" law: to keep violent criminals off the streets. We recommend a "yes" vote.