[Excerpts]
A decade after it was enacted, California's three-strikes sentencing law has had little impact on violent crime while costing taxpayers $8 billion to imprison tens of thousands of felons, most of them for nonviolent offenses, according to a study released today.
The report by the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute also found that blacks have been imprisoned under the three-strikes law at 10 times the rate of whites, while the rate for Hispanics has been almost 80% greater than for whites.
Nearly 65% of those convicted of second or third strikes were serving time in prison for nonviolent crimes. They included 672 third-strikers serving 25 years to life in prison for drug possession a number that was greater than the number of third-strikers in prison for second-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon and rape combined.
While only two ex-felons were serving 25 years to life for petty theft a decade ago, that number soared to 354 by last September.
The six largest California counties using three strikes most frequently had lower decreases in crime rates than the six that used the law less often. Similarly, states that did not have three-strikes laws had lower average rates of violent crime and larger average drops in violent crime than the states with the tough sentencing law. For example, New York, which does not have a three-strikes law, had much larger drops in total crime and violent crime than California.
Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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