Ten years ago economists predicted that the high cost of incarcerating felons under California's "Three Strikes" law would drive the state into bankruptcy. Then-Governor Pete Wilson ignored these prescient sages in order to further his political ambitions and to appear as a tough-on-crime politician/presidential-hopeful. Even at an incarceration cost of over $30,000 per inmate per year, Mr. Wilson claimed the law would save the state money. How exactly these voodoo economics would occur remained unspoken, as did the fact that crime was actually on the wane. He made political capital off of Polly Klaas' tragedy, pushing through a poorly-written law that has caused unexpected consequences. these include morally and fiscally bankrupting California.
In the past, persons falsely charged with a crime would often accept a plea bargain rather than face the risk of a wrongful conviction and lengthy prison term. Such people did not know then the consequences they would one day face. California's Three-Strikes law retroactively punishes people. Ten, twenty or fifty years ago, please accepted plea bargains without knowing they would later receive a life sentence for doing so.
Our Founding Fathers knew the evils of such "ex post facto" laws, and took what they believed were adequate steps to prevent these laws from being enforced. However, in our age, the courts do not hesitate to push their political agendas. In an effort to expedite what they felt was the will of the people, the courts have rules that ex post facto violations were to be tolerated in Three-Strikes cases.
Time has shown that the usual Third-Striker is a non-violent pizza thief or drug addict who once accepted a plea bargain that now counts as a strike. He is not the rapist, child molester or murderous gang-banger Wilson indicated would be the target of this law. In fact, one unintended consequence of this law is that in People v. Jefferson, 58 Cal. Rptr. 2d 252, an allegedly violent gang-banger was prevented from being given multiple life sentences because the sloppy wording of the Three-Strikes law foreclosed that possibility.
People charged with crimes now fear to accept a plea bargain, since these strikes carry the minimum of a life sentence. They choose to risk all by fleeing capture in a high-speed chase. If captured alive, they take their case all the way to a jury trial, since being acquitted is their only hope of avoiding lifetime imprisonment. Court cases that were once resolved within a month's time now run on for years, at great expense.
The increase of prisoners seeking trial has created such a backlog that new courts, jails and related facilities have further burdened tax-payers. As a direct result of the unintended consequences of the Three Strikes law, California is plunging further and further into debt. One would expect to hear a clamorous protest over this debacle.
Instead, except for a brief hue and cry over Gov. Davis' raising the salaries of prison guards while slashing all other public programs, the press has been strangely quiet as to the real cause of California's budget crisis.
Our once progressive California penal system is now filled with non-violent lifers and is roundly condemned by the U.N. and the International Community as a human rights violatorWe now sentence dope fiends to die in prison for their crime of stealing a videotape to bring home to their poor children. We need to correct this unjust and unconstitutional Three-Strikes law. It is the main reason California is running a deficit. There is a moral and financial const to the ill-conceived Three-Strikes law, and Californians are now paying it.
-- A California prisoner, August 2003