Three Strikes Law

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the issues surrounding the "three strikes" law to determine whether it has been effective in reducing crime, if it deters crime,and if it is a fair and practical law. Ultimately, this paper aims to determine if the three strikes law should be implemented nation-wide. It discusses how since its introduction in 1993, the controversial "three strikes" sentencing law has been a topic of heated debate amongst politicians, lawmakers and the public. It looks at how the foundation of the "three strikes" law is often referred to as the "six percent solution" which holds that a small percentage of criminals, approximately six percent, commit up to 80 percent of all crimes. Thus, proponents of the "three strikes" laws believe that it will get this highly active and dangerous group of repeat criminals off the street, significantly reducing crime rates. Statistics and graphs are included.

From the Paper:

"A separate study by Beres and Griffith (1998) revealed that the three strikes law produces a modest reduction in crime (Jones, et al, 2001). However, these results showed that the reasoning behind the law is intrinsically flawed for many reasons. For one, there is little evidence that incarcerating the six percent of career criminal actually reduces crime. Rather, evidence shows that a substantial number of young males engage in criminal activity during their adolescence years. In addition, this study showed that criminally active offenders are often imprisoned regardless of "three strikes" laws. Therefore, the only offenders affected by the three-strikes law are mainly low-rate, non-violent offenders. Finally, this study revealed that sentencing repeat offenders to longer terms would not have a real impact on the general crime rate. "

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