Last week I wrote an article about the strict laws surrounding marijuana that have led to a major rise in incarceration of America’s youth. The issue began to weigh even more heavily on my mind when I read the article “Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Shame of Three Strikes Laws” in the most recent edition of Rolling Stone magazine.
The article discusses the need for a reform of the Three Strikes law, hastily passed in California to placate a shaken people following the 1993 kidnapping and murder of a young girl.
The gist of the law is as simple as it sounds: After three crimes, the state must impose harsher sentences on offenders. The sentences being handed out are 10 to 25 years or even life in prison, more often than not for menial crimes like stealing socks or possessing trivial amounts of drugs.
When Polly Klaas was killed in 1993, the culprit was a criminal released from jail, who clearly hadn’t been reformed by the system. Voters argued that if he hadn’t been released and hadn’t been trusted by the system to be changed, this girl would still be alive.
While that may be true, the law hadn’t yet developed specifications for the difference between petty larceny and murder. Because of that incident, thousands sit in California penitentiaries today, waiting to finish their sentence or die, whichever comes first.
Most of the those locked away under the Three Strikes law were homeless people who had been found guilty of small crimes three times. In one instance the third crime was serving as a lookout for an undercover cop on a drug bust. On another occasion, it was for stealing a piece of pizza. The law has earned the title of “the world’s most expensive and pointlessly repressive homeless care program”, and yet it remains.
Lady Justice may be blind, but the prosecutors and judges of California and the nation alike shouldn’t be. They should be capable of seeing more than just a list of boxes that, when checked off, result in imprisonment. Currently one out of every 142 American citizens is in jail. Even worse, one out of every 32 are either in prison or under court-ordered watch or parole. In what truly great, free country is it just to put a man in prison until he dies for stealing a pair of socks?
While some lawyers are working fervently to free the convicts of the Three Strikes law, the problem lies within the law itself. If this law is overturned, more helpful legislation could be written to transfer money spent on prisoner care to programs that create jobs for the people of California. Prisons should be more than just storage containers for people.