3 Strikes for 3 Strikes: The case against mandatory prison sentences

Radical Society, Jul 2002 by Vitale, Alex

Michael J. Moore, The Legacy: Murder and Media, Politics and Prison (Video documentary, 1999) Sasha Abramsky, Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, 320 pp.)

Franklin Zimring, Gordon Hawkins, and Sam Kamin, Punishment and Democracy: Three Strikes and You're Out in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 274pp.)

There are now over 2 million Americans behind bars, despite the fact that crime rates have been falling for a decade. The War on Drugs and the War on Crime in their various guises have generated numerous calls to "get tough" on criminals through expanded prison sentences. Incarceration rates have increased fivefold in the last thirty years and are five to eight times higher than those of other industrialized nations. Yet, we continue to build new prisons sacrificing funding that could be used for education and other social pursuits.

What is behind what Elliot Currie calls "our extraordinary experiment in imprisonment"? The apotheosis of this orgy of incarceration is undoubtedly California's "three strikes" initiative (hereafter without quotation marks), which was passed overwhelmingly by California voters in 1994. This law created long mandatory minimum sentences for a range of felony defendants. Despite the law's name, most defendants sentenced under the new law have only committed one prior "strike" offense. And, while proponents of the law emphasized the use of life sentences to incapacitate violent criminals, the vast majority of those imprisoned under three strikes have committed nonviolent crimes such as burglary and drug offenses. The result has been an expansion of the California penal system, which was already among the largest in the world with over 160,000 inmates (bigger than the inmate populations of France and Germany combined).

In the last several years there have been a number of attempts to explain the rise of California's three strikes law. The three works under review - a documentary, a journalist's account, and an empirical study - attempt to place three strikes in historical context and analyze their implications. Each explores important parts of this complex issue from a different political and methodological perspective.

During the 1994 three strikes campaign documentary filmmaker Michael J. Moore felt that most Californians were not aware of exactly what they were voting for. Soon after the election he set out to create a record of the process of the law's conceptualization and passage. Utilizing extensive interview and news footage, Moore lays out the tragic stories of the deaths of two young girls, each killed by repeat violent felons. In 1992, Kimber Reynolds was shot to death during a robbery. Her father, a longtime Republican activist, responded to her death by organizing the drafting of the three strikes law.

It was the internationally publicized kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas in 1993, however, that catapulted the issue to the center of the political stage, bringing with it broad support from the public and politicians. Moore presents a powerful portrait of the way in which the personal tragedies of the fathers of Kimber and Polly drove the early effort. Mark Klaas and Mike Reynolds each discuss the anger they felt and the need to take some kind of action as an emotional response. This part of the story alone would have been compelling. However, events soon overtook both of these men and Moore's film takes a new direction. Moore points out that despite a drop in crime nationwide, media coverage of crime had expanded dramatically. The two-month period after Polly's kidnapping, during which her fate was unknown, saw a firestorm of media coverage. The result was that when Polly's murderer was caught and her body recovered, tens of thousands of Californians became involved in the previously moribund three strikes campaign. Moore shows the groundswell of grassroots support for the initiative as thousands lined up to collect and sign petitions all over the state.

When Mark Klaas was approached by Mike Reynolds and asked to support the three strikes effort, he eagerly joined up and became a visible spokesperson for the campaign, increasing its media visibility. However, Moore shows how over the next several months, Klaas became convinced that three strikes was a mistake. In large part as a result of the urgings of his father, Klaas joined the opposition to three strikes, arguing that despite its call to lock up repeat violent offenders, the majority of those who would be covered by the law would be guilty of nonviolent crimes. The media, however, never acknowledged this change of heart.

Before Polly Klaas's murder, most politicians were loath to support three strikes. Afterwards, Governor Pete Wilson, looking at one of the worst approval ratings in state history, tied himself forcefully to the issue, along with numerous others running for state offices. In mid 1994 the state legislature passed three strikes, hoping to leave the door open to future amendments. Reynolds, however, with money pouring in from politicians and special interest groups such as Mike Huffington ($350,000), the California GOP ($422,000), the California Prison Guards Association ($100,000), and the National Rifle Association ($100,000), decided to keep the initiative campaign going. The difference being that the amendment of an initiative requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature.