PUTTING A FACE ON THREE-STRIKES INJUSTICE

I got a note from my friend Carl Jones the other day -- Carl Quinton
Jones, prisoner No. E-66555 at Folsom State. Usually he writes letters
on what he calls his "cellie's" typewriter. He tells me about his
prison baseball team, complains about the food, asks me about my kids,
discourses on anything but his future prospects -- of which he has had
none. But this was a quick note penned on a prison-issue greeting
card, and it included a new sentiment: hope.

"I hope to see you and your family when I get out," Carl wrote in his
careful printing. "I'm hoping they will change the three-strikes law
in November." California voters this fall will have a chance to vote
yes or no on Proposition 66, which would soften the state's
three-strikes law so that only those who have committed violent or
serious crimes would be sent away for life. The three-strikes law was
enacted in 1994, after the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas in
Petaluma. Citizens, even those in low-crime areas, have felt strangely
comforted, oddly unbothered, by the fact that huge numbers of men are
being locked away for life, many of them for relatively minor offenses.

There are many disturbing statistics regarding the U.S. prison
population, but this is my favorite: With just 5% of the world's
population, the U.S. incarcerates an estimated one of every four
prisoners in the world. California has been in the vanguard of harsh,
mandatory sentencing, and its three-strikes law is the emblem of such
policies. It is certainly not coincidental to the nation's large prison
population that so many of the inmates are like Carl Jones: black or
Latino men from the inner city, largely faceless to suburban,
middle-class voters.

This is how Carl ended up as one of California's 42,000 second-or
third-strikers affected by the three-strikes law: In 1990, he was
convicted of a burglary at a private home. He carried no weapon and no
one was home. A year later, he was convicted for another burglary
under the same circumstances: no weapon, no one home. He did some time
for that one, less than a year.

In 1994, he broke into Crenshaw High during summer vacation -- the
same school where, 15 years earlier, he had been the gritty,
clutch-hitting catcher on a historic baseball team that included two
future big-league all-stars, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Brown. Nearly
all his teammates, even the bench players, got a shot at pro ball. But
when the scouts overlooked Carl, it shocked and deflated him. He found
work pouring concrete at downtown construction projects but then fell
into an addiction to crack cocaine.

What drove him to break into his old high school? Carl could never
say. But Crenshaw was the last place where he had truly excelled, and
I have wondered if he was looking for something he left behind: a
sense of purpose and pride. He was a confused, down-on-his-heels guy
in need of counseling and drug rehab. I don't know what his future
would have held -- it certainly wasn't looking good -- but our
nation's policy has never been to lock folks away for life on the
basis of their poor prospects.

Carl's lawyer remembers the Crenshaw break-in as the eraser case, not
because Carl erased anybody but because the only result of "this
aimless foray into an unoccupied classroom" was that the ledge under
the blackboard, the shelf that holds erasers, was ripped from the wall.

And that was strike three.

A judge gave Carl the mandatory: 25 years to life. He was 34 years old
when he was sentenced; without a change in the law, his first
opportunity for parole will be in 2019, when he is 58.

As is always the case with California ballot propositions, there is
strong disagreement about what the actual effect of Prop. 66 will be
if it passes. Proponents contend that it will free thousands of
prisoners who, like Carl, have had a 25-year-to-life term imposed for
nonviolent offenses and that it would shave millions of dollars from a
prisons budget that is routinely rounded off in news reports to $6
billion a year.

Opponents, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have predictably
fallen back on what initially drove enactment of three strikes: raw,
primitive fear. The governor and Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer argued, among
other things, that Prop. 66 would "flood our streets with thousands of
dangerous felons, including rapists, child molesters and murderers,"
and that it would lead to the release of 26,000 convicted criminals, a
figure more than seven times higher than the proponents' estimates of
inmates whose sentence could even be reconsidered. Schwarzenegger's
stance seems particularly gutless -- and a nod in the direction of the
prison guards union, which has held sway over the last few California
governors and has consistently pushed for ever harsher sentencing laws.

In addition to writing letters, Carl calls my home on occasion. I talk
to him and then sometimes pass the phone to my 12-year-old son,
because I know Carl craves conversations with people who are not
inmates or guards. They don't have much to share, really. Carl tells
him to stay in school and stay out of trouble.

With a child's righteous indignation, my son sometimes demands that I
help Carl -- that there must be something I can do to get him out. I
have to tell him, sadly, that there isn't. But now it looks as if
there is something the voters can do, and I fervently hope they make
the right choice.