CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2012 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“THREE-STRIKES CHANGE NOT AS SIMPLE AS IT SEEMS”
On the surface, Proposition 36 on the
fall ballot seems like it should be an absolute slam-dunk. That’s the
initiative seeking to change California’s landmark Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out
law, the 1994 measure imposing an automatic 25-years-to-life sentence on most
three-time felons.
Proposition 36 seeks to change that
just a bit, requiring that any third offense yielding the draconian sentence be
a violent one. Its supporters say this would produce quick reductions in
sentence for about 3,000 current convicts whose third strikes were sometimes as
trivial as shoplifting or simple theft, crimes that are often misdemeanors but
can be lifted by prosecutors to third-strike status if they wish.
Pass this measure and those 3,000
prisoners will quickly have their long sentences reduced, freeing them and
saving the state a cool $47,000 each every year, or a total of $141 million per
year. That’s nice to save in a day when California regularly runs multi-billion
dollar budget deficits.
But wait a minute, says Mike Reynolds,
the Fresno photographer whose daughter’s 1992 murder while she resisted a
purse-snatcher was one proximate cause spurring both the Legislature and voters
to adopt the current compulsory sentencing system, since adopted by 19 other
states.
“We would see a whole new level of
offender released,” says Reynolds. “These people had at least two other violent
felonies before they got their third strike, no matter what it was for.”
He also insists that any savings would
be illusory. “This law has saved $57 billion in crimes that were not committed,
but would have been otherwise, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. And
that doesn’t even account for all the murders and rapes that have not happened
in the 18 years we’ve had this law.”
Reynolds is convinced letting 3,000
third-strikers (more than one-third of the 8,000-odd current ones) out of
prison would lead to a new wave of serious, violent crime.
That’s not what the research shows,
according to the Three Strikes Project, a Stanford University effort that’s
behind Proposition 36. Some three-strikes inmates have long been held on the
presumption that misdemeanors are often precursors of major offenses committed
later by the same people. But the Stanford project maintains no credible
academic study has ever supported this conclusion.
Supporting this assertion is the fact
that violent crime rates are slightly higher in other parts of the state than
in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties, where district attorneys past and
present have long acted as if Proposition 36 were already in place. Those prosecutors
include 2010 Republican attorney general candidate Steve Cooley in Los Angeles
and George Gascon (also a former deputy police chief in Los Angeles) and Kamala
Harris (the current attorney general) in San Francisco.
Statewide, crime rates are close to 50
percent lower overall than before Three Strikes passed, and Reynolds maintains
there’s a clear cause and effect at work here.
Michael Romano, the Stanford professor
who founded the Three Strikes Project which for years has also helped appeal
harsh sentences against nonviolent three strikers, has claimed only 4 percent
of persons serving life terms for nonviolent third offenses are likely to
commit new crimes if released, about one-fifth the rate for inmates released
from the general prison population.
For sure, there’s one thing
Proposition 36 would not solve: It would not do much about the reality that
California prisons have become a vast system of geriatric homes, as prisoners
with life terms cannot be released upon reaching their 60s and 70s, when
committing violent crime is rare.
Releasing most elderly convicts could
save the state far more than the $141 million Proposition 36 would produce,
especially since older inmates are the most likely to need expensive medical
care.
The vast majority of the approximately
3,000 prisoners Proposition 36 would let go do not fall into the senior citizen
category. Many were sentenced while in their 20s, which puts them in their late
40s or early 50s even when their minimum 25-year-terms are up (often 20 years
with good behavior). Those people remain in an age category where violent
crimes are a serious possibility.
Still, there is no doubt that holding
some three-strikers is both unnecessary and often a waste of big money. The
problem comes in predicting which three-time losers who might be released will
commit yet another crime – an imprecise science at best. This makes it clear
passage of Proposition 36 would produce at least some additional crime, even if
that comes at the low rate Romano claims.
That, of course, has to be weighed
against the flimsiness of the third strikes that put some of today’s prisoners
back behind bars for life, or close to it.
One good thing about this initiative
fight is that it’s being waged on the battleground of ideas, not via TV
commercials. That’s because neither the yes nor the no side has enough money
right now to stage a major campaign. Ideally, that’s how things should be for
all ballot propositions.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The
Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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