Before we added the mindless “no tolerance” rules of the fear-inspired classroom to the criminal justice system, we already had laws in many states regarding habitual offenders. The “problem” with such laws has been that they actually compelled the prosecution to make a case that the persons offenses were habitual.
By going to a “three strikes” option, the prosecutors were relieved of the duty of actually proving their case while the public got a feel good solution that made them feel safe as they locked up non-violent criminals, pretending they were violent.
Prosecutors have been known to combine multiple counts in a single event for the purpose of invoking the “three strikes” rule–and in California, at least, the first two “crimes” are permitted to be treated that way under law. So a drunken malicious destruction of property plus resisting arrest at age nineteen (even if it occurs in a different state) may be used as the first two “strikes.”
I favor habitual or persistent criminal laws.
Three strikes is simply idiocy embraced by people who want to feel they are tough on crime.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, the concept is not actually that bizarre. It’s quite common for a repeat or habitual felon to receive a harsher sentence than would a first-time offender for the same crime. Perhaps you’re confusing it with the notion that someone’s prior offenses should not be considered in a trial when determining a defendant’s guilt? Once guilt is determined, however, past behavior is routinely taken into account.
I personally don’t agree with “three strikes” laws, as I think they’re facile (even the stupid baseball metaphor aspect of it offends me) and can lead to some of the absurdities described in this thread. But there should definitely be some legal mechanism to deal with those who’ve clearly made a lifestyle out of crime and appear to have no intention of considering an “alternative lifestyle.”
There is a series of problems with such laws in practice.
My first issue is not directly with the laws themselves, but with the fact that they magnify existing differentials in the application of the criminal justice system. Given that these laws tend (I think) to apply only to felonies, there is a major benefit in getting a charge plead down to a misdemeanor. That’s way more likely to happen to someone with a good attorney, from a “good” family/neighborhood, than it is to people at the bottom of the economic, social, or racial pecking order. Tow individuals may have committed exactly similar priors, yet one of them has ended up with 2 misdemeanors and the unlucky one with two felonies. They both come up on a third charge, it strikes me as unfair that one is facing a life time in prison.
The second issue is my general dislike of mandatory sentencing. Judges are meant to be intelligent people. We appoint them to assess the situation and apply the correct penalty. Tying their hands so that a person stealing a small amount of food to feed his family is required to go down for 25 to life, or that an 18 year old who has sex with his 17 year old girlfriend is required to register as a sex offender for life seems to me as removing the decision making from the correct hands. Sentencing shouldn’t be done by lynch mobs, even if that lynch mob is doing it through the ballot box.
Finally the effect on the prison system is worrying. Our prisons were not built for elderly prisoners. If you have 40 year olds and 45 year olds getting sentenced to 25 to life for these offenses, you will see (as I understand is already occurring) a dramatic increase in the elderly population. That’s not only a massive strain on already inadequate health services in prison, including mental care as Alzheimer’s cases began to kick in, but it is also a vulnerable, abusable population for the vicious inmates. It isn’t a matter of just locking people up. If we have any claim to be a civilized society, we need to look at what happens to these people when they are in prison, and, if we ever let them out, what future there is for them outside.
The thing is that we’re talking about the same type of petty non-violent crimes that promote various Recreational Outrage threads in the Pit. If you go read those, you’ll see people gladly suggesting the perpetrators of these crimes have their fingers broken and their eyes gouged out - and complaining about how the legal system isn’t doing anything to stop these people. Well, you wanted the legal system to do something - this is something. You enact a law that people who commit a series of petty crimes get locked away.
It’s the contradiction I have to live with every day. When somebody’s out stealing your car, or selling cocaine to your kid, or hanging out wearing gang colors on your street, the police should be doing something to stop him. But a year later when he’s in prison, this same guy is a victim of circumstances who’s being abused by cruel brutes - the guards of course because everyone knows that the other prisoners are just as noble and honorable as our poor victim.
I am generally an opponent of mandatory sentencing. I see how and why it comes to pass, though – some judges cannot bring themselves to believe that anyone is really bad. “There’s no such thing as a bad boy,” apparently. Those judges fail to exercise the responsibility they should; the public gets outraged and takes discretion away from all judges. A shame, becuase those recalcitrant judges are a tiny fraction of the bench.
Yes, and the bastard STOLE them from some innocent person.
The link clearly states that the guy’s “previous two strikes were for home burglaries”, and then nonsensically adds, “but they were committed without violence, and he wansnt even armed.”
Gee, what a nice guy. I hope he breaks into my house tonight!.After all, he won’t kill me, and he’ll only steal a few hundred dollars of my property, not all of it.
I don’t want a guy like that living in my neighborhood. Do you?
A significant proportion of the inmate population in any prison consists of sociopaths. Sociopathy is, for the most part, untreatable; there is no therapy or drug that will give someone a conscience.
I do have some problems with the arbitrary nature of the “three strikes” law, with its baseball allusions and the emphasis on the magical number three. But what people tend to overlook is that our criminal justice system is already very generous, particularly to non-violent and first-time offenders; anyone who has had exposure to it knows this. Shoplift from a store or burglarize someone’s home and you’ll likely get a very short sentence (and you’ll only end up serving half of it anyway), or maybe even probation if you’ve got a good attorney who persuades the judge that this was a one-time mistake and you’ve learned your lesson.
A “habitual offender,” however, just doesn’t get it; this is a person who just can’t live in civilized society because he has no sense of guilt. To a sociopath, other people are just things to be used. A criminal who is perfectly aware of the consequences of his actions but repeatedly breaks the law anyway is not someone who can be rehabilitated. The idea that people in prison are people “just like us” who have made poor choices is simply wrong.
I’m not sure where I saw it, but I remember hearing about a man that this did happen to, because he either got life or some otehr absurd amount of time for minor drug charges. I’m looking now…
No I don’t want him living in my neighborhood, however “3 Strikes” laws give the next guy with two priors an incentive to kill you, because getting caught making off with your TV now carries the same penalty as beating you to death with the fireplace poker, so what does he have to lose?
Being opposed to 3 Strikes laws is not the same as saying that criminals shouldn’t be punished, it’s a matter of feeling that the punishment does not fit the crime and makes the problem worse by giving petty criminals an incentive to become extremely violent.
A minor nitpick, if I may. I don’t believe that it actually offers an incentive, unless the criminal in question honestly believes that he’ll be able to perform a flawless murder. What it does is remove the incentives for the criminal to avoid being extremely violent.
I know it’s a minor point, and I agree with you about the effect. I just think you had the reasoning involved a bit backwards.
I think the point is more that if you see him after he has broken in, so he knows he will be identified, he might as well kill you. Or even if he thinks that the extra chance of getting caught if he kills you is lesser than the extra chance of getting caught if he doesn’t.
It’s not an argument I especially like, as I don’t think many criminals at that level make those sort of calculations. But that’s the argument I think Valgard was making.
You’re being able to recognize him doesn’t matter if you never see him again, and don’t know who he is. But murder in robbery raises the stakes way up. Sneaking into a house, stealing something and bugging off…once you’re clear, you’re clear. Murder somebody in a home invasion, you set off all the alarm klaxons, AAArrooooga! AAArroooga!
And they will look for you. And somebody will sell you out, because you are prime bargaining material.
“You’re looking at 210 years hard time, Lefty!”
“I can give you that guy, who did that thing.”
“You get out tomorrow, on the warden blows you in the excercise yard.”
In my state, you’re automatically a drug dealer if you have 50 prescription pills on you that are not your own. Now, any good junkie will go thru 50 pills in a couple of days, and he’s not going to want to sell any of them, he needs them. But in the eyes of the law, he’s a dealer.
Sentences are also intensified if said junkie is apprehended while being too near a church or school. Dealing drugs in such places, shame! Think of the children! Think of the Godly!
Now our prisons are getting filled with addicts who will be doing 10-20 years, and have no incentive to behave, because if they’re good, they serve just as long as if they’re bad. Oh, by the way, it costs $28,000 a year to house them.
And California’s prison system is in a real state of crisis: Overcrowded to the max, run by the inmate gangs, and stuffed with petty offenders who aren’t going to get out of prison for 25+ years.
These folks merit consequences, they merit punishment. But it does a terrible disservice to both the person and to the taxpaying public to incarcerate them for decades for petty s**t.
I’m going to take the pro-three strikes side in this debate.
Maybe this will come off a holier-than-thou but I am 36 and I have never been arrested, let alone gone to prison. I find it very hard to sympathize with people who have broken major (i.e. felonious) laws AT LEAST THREE TIMES!
Look, if you don’t want to follow society’s rules, then society doesn’t need you to be a part of it. Simple as that! Three strikes means that there should be no excuse of “Oooooops! I was holding that gun for a friend.” or “I wuz framed” because if that has happened to you three times, your luck is pretty fucking bad. And if you don’t want life for stealing cookies, then DON’T COMMIT A FELONY TWICE PREVIOUSLY."
I’m all for compassion, but seriously - how many chances should a felon get if three is not enough? Four? A Dozen? As many as they want? Try that at work or in your marriage and see how far you get.
Bottom line: If you want to be a part of society, play by the rules.
We should probably be closing down hospitals as well. Look at how many sick people there are in a hospital compared to people out on the street. And let’s not even get into the comparative death rates. It’s obvious that hospitals must be causing ill health and the people who work in them must be inhuman monsters to cause all that suffering.
Life isn’t that simple, though. It isn’t a matter that action X is always charged as a felony, while action Y is always a misdemeanor. Certain folks are more likely to get charged with felonies for the same actions that other people get charged with misdemeanors.
What three strikes does is shift the discretion - it now resides more with the prosecutors, and less with the judges. And that does not make me feel more confident in the justice system.
That’s not the issue. If life is warranted, give life as a sentence. If another chance is warranted, don’t give life as a sentence. Setting a predefined cut off point without any regard for the situation is attempting to force a one-size-fits-all solution onto a complex problem.