Реферат: Three Strikes And You

were to implement the new law to the full extent for the

next twenty-five years, the state would have to pay an extra

$5.5 billion (1998). A significant piece of this estimate

would be funding the incarceration of elderly prisoners who

require more funds to maintain (Walker, 1998).

The third reason Walker uses to support his proposition

is that the law will not reduce crime (1998). He supports

this claim by stating that there is no evidence that crime

has been reduced by these laws and that the law is not

consistently enforced (1998). Burr affirms this statement

in his own study by stating that “no study has demonstrated

that the three strikes law has reduced violence” (2000). As

stated earlier, the three strikes law has not been

administered by all the states that currently have it

either. By 1997, twenty-four states and the federal

government had adopted some form of three strikes mandatory

sentencing laws (Schafer, 1999). Walker suggests as well

that three strikes laws are nothing new and that “most

states have had some kind of habitual offender law for many

decades” (1998).

There are two additional considerations that have been

documented supporting Walker’s claim that three strikes is a

“terrible crime policy.” The first is that it has forced

more criminals both underground and to become more violent.

Dannie Martin, an ex-convict with seven prior felonies on

his record, now a novel writer suggests through his

observations that this new law has only forced criminals to

work underground (1995). They are more often working alone

as well and created a “nothing-left-to-lose mentality” among