In 1994, Californians saw a state criminal justice system that too often let the worst criminals out of prison to wreak destruction and hurt the innocent, only to be sent back to prison for worse crimes. Fresno parent Mike Reynolds had been pushing Sacramento to pass a "three-strikes" measure after the murder of his 18-year-old daughter, Kimber, during a robbery in 1992. Then the rape and murder of Petaluma 12-year-old Polly Klaas — kidnapped from her home by another violent career criminal — confirmed the voters' worst fears.
The public was ready. The Legislature was afraid. And both Sacramento and California voters passed tough three-strikes measures. This being California, there was a pro-criminal lobby that warned against the law, which mandated a 25-year-to-life term for the third offense for criminals who had already committed two serious or violent felonies. It also increased penalties for a second strike.
Longer sentences for career offenders? Horrors.
Critics duly seized on state Department of Corrections forecasts, which ominously predicted that within five years, the prison population would more than double, from 124,813 to 245,554. The state would have to build 20 new prisons just to keep up. Within three years, opponents charged, prison spending would outstrip state spending on higher education.
Almost 15 years later, it turns out many of the so-called experts were wrong — and the voters were right. In approving the tough-on-crime measure, California residents didn't have to pay for an inmate population explosion or a bunch of new prisons. What voters got instead was a law that, for the most part, has worked the way it was supposed to.
Fact: California's inmate count was 171,444 last year — far below the grim projections. In part because other prisons already were in the works by the time voters approved three strikes, Sacramento authorized and completed not 20 new prisons in five years, but only one new prison in the past 14 years. And that happened while the state population grew from 33 million to 38 million.
Yet critics won't even admit they were wrong. What's worse, they want the public to believe that their horror stories actually came to pass. Every few years, lacking solid statistics, they throw out anecdotes — like the repeat offender who was sentenced under three strikes after snatching a pizza from a group of children — to argue that a draconian law has turned California into The Prison State, where petty criminals routinely are put away for life.
Why? Because they don't believe in harsh sentences for career criminals. They want repeat offenders to do long time on the installment plan.
State Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, decided to fight back — with facts. His office put together a seven-page paper, "Who Is In Our State Prisons?," that debunks many of the oft-repeated three-strikes misinformation that paints California as a state that over-incarcerates. The paper points to a study released in February by the Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project, which placed California in the middle quintile of American states in terms of inmates per capita. For the record, the Pew Center has been critical of three-strikes laws.
Think that California prisons are teeming with petty offenders? Think again. The Runner paper cites a federal survey that found that 47 percent of California inmates were repeat violent offenders, and 33 percent were repeat nonviolent offenders. Most of the rest were first-time felons who had committed crimes against people. Think murder, manslaughter, robbery, assault, rape, other sex offenses or kidnapping. California's crime rate fell dramatically after three strikes passed.
In 1993, the year before voters approved the measure, the FBI ranked California fourth among the states for total crimes per 100,000 people; in 1999, the murder rate had been cut in half, and California's crime rate had fallen to 29th place.
As far as Runner is concerned, long penalties have made California safer.
The three-strikes law, he said, "keeps people in prison longer. It also makes people's behavior change."
Runner aide Charlie Fennessey points to burglary convictions as proof that criminals have changed their behavior to keep up with the changed laws. After 1994, he found, some crimes — second-degree burglary and car theft, which are not three-strikes offenses — increased to earlier levels, but first-degree burglary, a three-strikes crime, remained flat.
"There's no rational explanation as to why the trends in burglaries would be bifurcated," Fennessey said, "unless it had something to do with the penalties."
Adam Gelb of the Pew Center provided an alternative explanation. Although he has not studied California's three-strikes law, he noted, "There is a very common occurrence in courtrooms across the country. It's called 'losing the gun.'" The theory is that criminals are behaving as before, but officers of the court are charging criminals for lesser offenses to avoid third-strike overkill.
"There's no evidence that anyone on the street knows the going rates for what their sentence is going to be or how those punishment rates have increased or decreased over time." Gelb said.
"To say that three strikes has worked, the question is: Compared to what? Since there is so little evidence in any context that longer punishment acts as a general or a special deterrent, it's hard to say that California taxpayers have gotten their money's worth and could not have prevented more crime with a variety of strategies."
Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento conceded that some prosecutors may be undercharging to avoid the longer sentences for repeat offenders. But many prosecutors are not. And the Runner report shows that the three-strikes law has locked up career criminals — which means that voters got from three strikes what they wanted.
Seth Unger of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told me that more than 1,000 third-strikers entered California prisons in 1995-96, but only 294 third-strikers entered the system 10 years later. Something has changed. Said Unger, "What three strikes was designed to do was cut down on the churning of the prison population. We know that people (who are third-strikers) are not going to be coming back anytime soon through the front gates, because they're not getting released."
When "three strikes" was put on the ballot in 1994, I voted no because I believed that the third strike should apply only to a serious or violent offense. I, too, believed that low-level offenders, not career criminals, would be locked behind bars for decades for petty crimes. So why can't other critics just admit they made a mistake?
"The fundamental reason that critics of tough criminal penalties cannot come to grips with the facts is their unshakable belief that longer sentences inevitably increase prison population," the Runner report said. As if on cue, a February Pew paper asserted that laws like three strikes drive up the prison population.
"Opponents of tough criminal laws cannot accept that penalties deter
crime," the Runner report said.
It's that simple.
It appears that petty criminals have either left the state or changed their ways. If they committed crimes, some at least committed different crimes. And when some small-time thug did get nicked for a small crime, it turned out the guy had a host of priors and couldn't stay out of prison to save his life.
Rather than celebrate the fact that California prisons are protecting the public by keeping violent, serious and repeat offenders behind bars, some California policy leaders actually want to neuter the three-strikes measure or even get rid of the law.
Perhaps the three-strikes supporters should follow the example of their opponents: Argue that if we get rid of three strikes, not only will crime surely go up, but worse, we'll also have to build 20 new prisons. We'll start to spend more on prisons than we spend on higher education. If we get rid of three strikes, the prison population will explode.
And this time, the dire predictions might turn out to be true.
E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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4 Comments | Post Comment
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Ma'am; I think you are missing the point. Incarceration is not just about drving a person's will into the dirt with non stop torture until death pardons him. It is as much about protecting the prisoner from the wrath of vengeance as it is about protecting society. Do prisons really protect either society or prisoner? Is it not true that few are improved by brutality, and that prisons are one long experience of brutality. Why should we expect people to be made better by a system that makes so many worse. If virtually all people in prison are repeat offenders, how is the legal system improving them, or protecting us? We cannot afford to imprison everyone, and so it is fortunate that our police only catch a fraction. But, at that, Law, law enforcement, and prisons account for huge amounts of government budget, and private moneys. Think of it as an immense negative make work project where money changes hands, but no one does nothing, and nothing gets done. And I am not advocating slavery for prisoners because if brutality is the goal, there are cheaper methods than slavery. No; I would have the punishment fit the crime, and not all the crimes that go unsolved. I would not have any prisoner be a target for all the hatred and frustration of legal society. I would try to remember that a punishment of a prisoner is a punishment to his family, and to all that wish him well, and ultimately to all of society. There is no way that society as a whole is not injured by crime, and so punishment should be impecably just, so that any injury is not made worse. We know there are cheaper methods for controlling the behavior of felons, but the object should be only the protection of society, even the society of those within captivity. If you do not expect that justice is medicine to cure every ill in society, then I don't want to know you, because those who do not believe in justice invariably treat all their fellows as brutes, and seek to control them for their own benefit, and so injure the whole of humanity. Instead of contemplating torture for those who have hurt us and may hurt us still, think of how to restore him to his honor so he may become a reliable citizan and neighbor. In this, the prisoner as a free agent must freely choose his own path, and his own fate. But; if for protection, we exclude others, there is no reason to make of prison a humiliating and degrading experience. Thanks. Sweeney.
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sun Jul 6, 2008 10:41 AM
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Oh, Ms. Saunders, how dangerous a little bit of information in the hands of the loud and opinionated can be. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The California Department of Corrections and "Rehabilitation" is in receivership by the federal government after years of litigation over its inability to handle even basic issues of managing prisoner health and welfare. And it's not just about prisoner health and welfare--much of the problem is dealing with communicable diseases that can be and often are passed on to the prison guard population and to the citizens of the state. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
And guess where those prisoners go when CDCR finally decides to dump them. Not anywhere near your front or back yard, I would wager, but right out there into the neighborhoods of innocent people who don't have the means to escape to Fantasyland where columns like yours get written. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I won't go into the horror stories of how many prisoners basically lost their human existence to the “three strikes” tag for petty crimes. I fully understand that supporters like you of measures like three strikes and for that matter, the death penalty, don't give a hoot if a few innocent people get stampeded in the mad rush. That's a small price to pay for allowing the mob the sweet opportunity to indulge in vengeance, even if there's a chance it is taken out on the wrong guy. It's the feeling in the gut that counts. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
One of the central issues for the prisons is overcrowding, and that's because regardless of what we manage to build, we DO need, and desperately so, more prison space to handle the prison population, at least until we start doing something about why our failing social and cultural fabric is generating so many prisoners in the first place. We just happen to be out of money to support that mushrooming, money-sucking industry. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
So it is laughable to see you write that in the last 14 years Sacramento has “authorized and completed only one new prison.” If you care to include what had been “authorized” but not completed at the time three strikes was voted in, we are looking at 12 prisons having been opened since 1992, and that's 12 out of the 24 California has opened since the state began in 1980 what was described in the year 2000 in a New York Times article as “the biggest prison building boom in the nation's history.” I guess you would also find it insignificant that, according to the December 1998 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the state at that time "held more inmates in its jails and prisons than France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined." ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Your fingers must be so busy burning up the keyboard you haven't had time to notice that the California budget has been running on empty for just about the entire time since 1992, and right now we are staring at a $14 billion or more shortfall that will have us going long into the summer before the state can figure this one out and get us a stopgap budget so we can limp along until next fiscal year's meltdown. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
It's the money, stupid. We haven't built more prisons because we don't have it. And taxpayers who must be shaken down for more of it are starting to wonder if there just isn't something wrong with this picture. They don't want any more. They want a different approach. The three strikes temper tantrum and subsequent don't-worry-be-happy party are over. They're looking at hard cold reality refusing to go away and feeling that big fat hangover pounding away at the soul of the state. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
You need to take a closer look at the great kingdom of CDCR. The whole thing is crumbling away as it sucks 5.3 billion dollars out of the state's general fund per year, and that does not include the cost in taxpayer-generated federal dollars of managing the receivership. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
We've turned the prison guard union, CCPOA, into just about the most powerful union in the world because they've got us by the short hairs. We need them so badly now they can extort us for just about anything they want. Heads have rolled one after the other in the CDCR administration because no one there has a clue how to do the job with the failing dollars CDCR has available to it. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
And, oh yes, crime. I just feel ripples of warmth and safety flow through me in anticipation when I think about walking the streets of cities like Los Angeles, Fresno, Oakland, San Francisco, and even Emerald City, where our bankrupt state government sits and hides behind that curtain of manufactured fiscal magic. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I guess YOU think we are making some kind of progress against crime, but I doubt if any of the rest of us do. At least those of us who have to ride buses and walk city streets and do unglamorous things like that. Personally, I think it's high time we woke up to the chaos we ultimately get when government inaction invites voters to throw a temper tantrum.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Masako
Sun Jul 6, 2008 12:14 PM
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Re: Masako;
Sir; I have to thank you for that comment. Rehabilitation is a subject I try to avoid for the obvious fact that many people leave prison worse than they went in. And there is little that can be done with them once they have become brutalized, and have begun to look at society as the target. The exclusion of people from society is the basis of tragedy. Police stories, and crime mysteries have always been comedies, looking at the same problem from the point of view of society made whole. The thing is, with a minimum diet, and a minimum of health care, if a person's life expectancy is greater in prison than without, then there is a huge problem outside that people are glossing over in order to claim the best of all worlds. How many people in prisons actually belong in an asylum? How many suffer from some mental deficiency that no amount of punishment will remedy? How many are physically deformed, and really looking for safe harbor. When we ask how long we can rationally hold a drug abuser we quit asking what reality he is trying to escape. I don't feel I have to escape my reality, but I am not everyone; and the presumption that any of these prisoners are just like you or I, always rational, never bitter, never heartbroken, and never in such emotional pain that crime make sense, is false. I don't have to feel for them. In fact, most of them are beyond hope. Rather, if it is possible, as it is, to see this society abusing more and more of the average person to the end of their wits, until hate-full and sniping at fellow citizens; where is the difference between the criminal and the public? What is it going to take to push the whole country over the edge, to spur us to international war, or to suicidal pollution just so we can hang onto our personal fantasy one more day. When we go to war with countries like Iraq to kill a dictator, why do we kill all the people who have no power in their lives. Prisoners before they were prisoners had no power in their lives. Isn't that the crime? Isn't democracy the power in their lives that every person needs. Clearly the people want power in their own hands. The people all want to deal out justice as they see fit, and the reason penalties must be so harsh is that law does not work for the peaceful, or for the criminal, and all we have left to control anyone in the populaton is fear. Be afraid. Lock your doors. Hate your neighbors. Injure him at every opportunity. Deny him justice. The reason I do not support law enforcement is not that it does not work for the prisoner, and does not make him whole with his punishment, but that it does not work for any of us, and only makes a bad problem worse. Thanks. Sweeney
Comment: #3
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Mon Jul 7, 2008 5:35 PM
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lso in the prison they put my son in with hardened criminals, murders, rapist, he was accused of stealign a purse, the officers wrote up (as usual a story worse than what happened) my son was ID in the bright lights of a police car from yards away and only by a red jacket, then later they ID someones else and named someone else as the suspect yet they had my son and that was enough for them. Now my so n is facing another charge because in prison the guards let the men of each group have :shot callers" these guys make the younger more scared young men do things that they fear if they dont they or their families will be killed. My son had no problems in two years there, keeping head low trying to get his education and this is what has happened. This is a big problem and he has a daughter out here waiting for him and now who knows how long it will be. All in the name of justice. As i watched all the proceedings and watched the DA at work forcing these people to plea no contest which might as well be guilty because they fear worse will happen.
You explain that to this little 6 year old gilr who cries every night for her daddy
Comment: #4
Posted by: final
Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:41 PM
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