By RENE CIRIA-CRUZ, New America
Media
Supporters of Proposition 36 are
optimistic that changing attitudes toward prison reform, coupled with economic
considerations, will have Californians voting in favor of tempering their
state’s controversial repeat offender law, known as “Three Strikes and You’re
Out,” in the upcoming November election.
“Popular support has always been
high for reforming Three Strikes,” says Prop. 36 advocate Geri Silva, director
and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based Families to Amend California’s Three
Strikes. “People realize that sending someone to prison for life for stealing a
donut is absurd.”
Backers of Prop. 36 had no trouble
gathering the 504,760 signatures required by law to get their measure on the
state ballot – about 800,000 people signed the petition – and a recent
statewide survey conducted by Pepperdine University’s policy school shows 78.1
percent of likely voters supporting it.
The sense of urgency among voters to
reform Three Strikes, suggests Silva, can be attributed to prison overcrowding
and soaring state spending on incarceration in the midst of a historic budget
crisis.
The political climate in California
and public attitudes toward prison reform were very different in 1994 when the
Three Strikes Initiative, Proposition 184, passed in a landslide with 72
percent of the popular vote. The initiative benefited in part from public fear
and anger over the highly publicized kidnapping, rape and murder of 12 year-old
Polly Klaas the previous year.
Proposition 184 imposed a mandatory
25 years to life prison sentence for anyone in the state convicted of a third
felony, including non-violent offenses like drug possession and theft.
Today, 26 other states have similar
sentencing laws on the books, but California’s Three Strikes law is widely
considered one of the most severe.
In one infamous 1995 case, Jerry
DeWayne Williams received a sentence of 25 years to life for snatching a slice
of pizza from a group of kids. Although Williams later convinced a judge
to reduce his sentence to five years, the case became a flashpoint for prison
reform advocates seeking to characterize Three Strikes as absurd.
While proponents of Three Strikes
argue the intent is to keep murderers, rapists and child molesters behind bars,
today roughly 4,000 inmates serving mandatory life sentences in California were
convicted for nonviolent offenses.
Today, 18 years after Three Strikes
was enacted, public perception of the law appears to have shifted. A Field Poll
conducted last year found widespread disapproval of Three Strikes in its current form — 74 percent of
voters polled were in favor of changing Three Strikes and giving judges and
juries more discretion in sentencing.
“People realize that the result of
the current Three Strikes law isn’t what they voted for,” says Dan Newman,
strategist for the 3 Strikes Reform Act campaign.
Proposition 36 would amend Three
Strikes by imposing a 25 years to life sentence only if the third conviction is
for a serious or violent felony.
The mandatory 25 to life sentence
would still be invoked, however, for any third felony conviction if the
individual also has a previous conviction for murder, rape or child
molestation.
Under Prop. 36, those with two
strikes would be sentenced to twice the usual time for their third conviction
for a non-serious felony, in lieu of the life sentence. Some 3,000 California
inmates currently serving a 25 years to life term for non-serious or nonviolent
third strikes would become eligible to petition judges for resentencing, if the
measure is approved.
A 2011 California Department of
Corrections report showed 40,998 Californians were in prison for offenses
classified as “strikes.” Of these, 8,727 were for third strikes, but an
estimated 40 percent of the third strikes were for nonviolent offenses.
The fair application of Three
Strikes has also been called into question. Ten years after passage of the law,
45 percent of all inmates in California serving life sentences under the Three
Strikes law were African American and about 30 percent were Latino, according
to a Justice Policy Institute study.
Supporters of Prop. 36 believe the
economy will be a big factor in how people vote this November. California spends
an average of $46,700 per inmate annually, according to a Legislative Analysts
Office report released last year.
The current third-strike population
will cost the state about $10 billion over the next 25 years, says a Center on
Juvenile and Criminal Justice study. Meanwhile, proponents of Prop. 36 say the
measure could save the state up to $100 million a year in reduced prison costs.
Prop. 36 is not the first measure
that seeks to lessen the impact of Three Strikes — its predecessor, 2004’s
Proposition 66, lost by a slim margin with 52.7 percent voting against – but
its supporters believe this time will be different.
“Prop. 36 itself is better written
and clearer about going after the super-criminals,” says Newman.
The care taken in crafting the
language of Prop. 36 is clearly a result of what happened in 1994, when
opponents of Prop. 66 zeroed in on ambiguities in the ill-fated proposition and
boldly claimed that it would release 26,000 murderers and rapists into the
streets, which Silva says was a “ridiculous and false claim.”
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used the
claims to attack the measure in last-minute television ads, and the anti-Prop. 66
campaign also garnered support from former governors, including Democrats Jerry
Brown and Gray Davis.
Not wishing to see history repeat
itself, lawyers from Stanford Law School crafted the language of Prop. 36,
together with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Because the measure is now written
more clearly, explains Newman, “a broader, bipartisan coalition is behind Prop.
36 this time.”
Endorsers of Prop. 36 include
liberal philanthropist George Soros, conservative anti-tax advocate Grover
Norquist, and a number of law
enforcement officials. Investor David Mills gave $953,000 to the campaign, and
Soros added $500,000 to the Prop. 36 war chest – nearly $2 million to date.
So far, the opposition has raised
$100,000, all coming from the Peace Officers Research Association of
California, Political Issues Committee.
Three Strikes advocate Mike
Reynolds, author of the 1994’s Prop.184, contends that the law deters crime and
should not be modified. Crime in the state has declined by 50 percent “in every
category” since the law’s passage, he states in a recent San Francisco
Chronicle op-ed.
Critics point out crime had been
declining even prior to Three Strikes. Moreover, a study by the Justice Policy
Institute found that California’s declining crime rates were no different from
states without a Three Strikes law. And counties that used the law the least
(San Francisco and Contra Costa) experienced slightly larger reductions in
violent crime compared with counties that used it the most (Kern and
Sacramento), according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
Three Strikes’ dubious impact on
crime prevention, in addition to the steep cost of implementing it, has swayed
even some law-and-order conservatives to support its amendment. One is Los
Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, who was among those opposed to changing
Three Strikes in 2004. Today, he is a vocal supporter of Prop. 36.
