Pubdate: Tue, 28 Sept. 1999
Source: Bergen Record (NJ)
Copyright: 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
Contact:  http://www.bergen.com/cgi-bin/feedback
Website: http://www.bergen.com/
Author: Joe Klaas
Note: The writer lives in Pebble Beach, Calif., is the grandfather of Polly
Klaas, whose murder in 1993 prompted the California Legislature to pass the
three-strikes law.

RETHINKING THREE-STRIKES LEGISLATION

Six years ago, my granddaughter, Polly Klaas, was snatched from her bedroom
and murdered by a man who should have been behind bars. In response, our
family and Californians rose up and passed the "three-strikes" law, a law
designed to remove predators like her murderer, Richard Allen Davis, from
our streets.

Or so we thought.

Five years later, the data suggest that most people locked up for second or
third strikes are not like Polly's killer. Rather, the majority have been
convicted of nonviolent crimes, like marijuana possession or petty theft.

Added to the grief that Polly's death has caused, my family one regrets that
the law passed in her name casts too wide a net, fails to target the
hard-core offenders it set out to reach, and has diverted critical funds
from crime prevention and education.

Now the California Legislature has sent to the governor a bill that could
help put our minds at rest. The bill would authorize the state legislative
analyst to study the impact of the three-strikes law. By signing this bill,
Gov. Gray Davis could set in motion a process that will help us separate
facts from fiction.

When they sought our votes, the sponsors of three-strikes promised the
public that their bill would remove dangerous criminals from our streets.
Today, only a fraction of those serving 25-to-life sentences fit that
profile, while a staggering 78 percent of second-strikers and 50 percent of
third strikers were convicted for nonviolent offenses.

Crime has plummeted in the Golden State since 1994. But while three-strikes
proponents have cited this as irrefutable proof that the law works, no
evidence links the statute to this welcome decline. In fact, the drop in
crime merely reflects a national trend that has seen crime fall at a quicker
rate in non-three-strikes states like Michigan and Alabama than in California.

Meanwhile, California's prisons are bursting at the seams. More than 160,000
inmates are jammed into prisons that were made to house 80,000, and almost
one-third of those prisoners are serving second-or third-strike sentences.
Three-strikes enforcement will tie up billions of taxpayers dollars for
decades to come.

Consider the following:

Each prisoner serving a 25-to-life sentence will cost the state about
$500,000 over his or her lifetime.

The annual cost of housing 29,000 nonviolent second-or third-strikers is
$632 million.

Los Angeles County, which prosecutes about 40 percent of three-strikes cases
statewide, racked up $322 million in enforcement costs from 1994 through 1997.

San Francisco has not sought three-strikes convictions for nonviolent
offenses, yet crime [both violent and nonviolent] has fallen faster there
than in Los Angeles.

The impact of three-strikes reverberates far beyond the prison walls.
Defendants who fear adding strikes to their name are bringing the legal
system to a virtual standstill as they reject plea bargains and opt for
trial. and with second-and third-strikers flooding our prisons, other
serious offenders are securing early release with alarming frequency.

The time has come for us to pose a painful question: Does three-strikes
offer enough benefits to justify its huge fiscal and societal impact?

In a climate in which the words "soft on crime" sound the death knell for
anyone who aspires to political office, few in power dare question the value
of the three-strikes statute. How many more prisons must we build before our
leaders realize that locking up more nonviolent offenders doesn't equal
being tough on crime?

My family and I understand more than most why we need strict laws that
prevent monsters like Richard Allen Davis from hurting our kids, but we also
owe it to ourselves to be smart about law enforcement. We must seek out the
truth about three-strikes and inform the debate with solid facts and figures.

It's too late to bring Polly back. But it's not too late for Gov. Davis to
take this step toward making California a wiser, safer state.

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