'THREE STRIKES' STRIKES OUT

The evidence that California's "three strikes"law is due for a second look
and some revision keeps growing. As the Legislative Analyst's Office
reported last week, the number of people serving longer prison sentences at
taxpayers' expense because of the law is at almost 50,000 and increasing.
There's no reliable evidence that this extra expense has reduced crime or
crime rates, and some people are in prison who really shouldn't be there.

"Three strikes" laws - different versions have been passed in 26 states -
are an effort to take career violent criminals off the streets, and that's
what California voters thought they approved when they passed Proposition
184 in November 1994.

Bur California's version turns out to be much more stringent than any other
state's.

Most states limit the enhanced penalties to violent crimes. But
California's law provides for enhanced penalties if a person who has
previously committed either a violent crime or burglary commits any new
felony, not only a violent crime. And whereas most jurisdictions stipulate
that crimes committed within a certain time period - usually five to ten
years - make one eligible for enhanced penalties, California's law has no
time limit.

The result is that, as the Legislative Analyst's Office noted in its recent
report (www.lao.ca.gov/), about 43,800 people are in prison on second
strikes (double the usual sentence) and 5,700 for a third strike (25 years
to life).

The LAO'S office didn't calculate cost, but most authorities place the cost
to taxpayers at $25,000 to $30,000 a year to keep an inmate in prison.
Those are probably conservative estimates.

One might not bother if these were truly violent criminals being kept off
the streets. But the LAO analysis also shows that only 40 percent of
third-strikers are in for a violent crime. The rest are in for crimes like
robbery (18 percent), first degree burglary (11 percent) or drug-related
crimes, including simple possession of a controlled substance.

Of second-strikers, 36 percent are in for property crimes and 33 percent
are in for drug offenses (20 percent for simple possession). Fewer than 20
percent of second-strikers are in for violent offenses.

That's not what most people thought the law would do.

Even so, some will still argue that paying to imprison those people is
worth it because the crime rate is going down and the "strikes" law is
responsible. A study released Monday from the University of California's
crime rate (according to problematic official figures) started to decline
in October 1991, three years before "three strikes" was passed, and that
the decline has continued on the same slope since the law came into effect.

While that is suggestive, UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring told
us yesterday, it doesn't quite prove that the "three strikes" law has no
deterrent effect. After all, you could argue that the crime rate would not
have continued to decline without the law.

But since only 10 percent of California criminal offenders fall into
categories covered by the "three strikes" law, you can compare "strikers"
against non-"strikers." If the law had a deterrent effect, one would expect
to see a steeper decline in crime among those covered by the "strikes" law.

So Professor Zimring studied arrest records in major California cities
before and after the law was passed. He found the crime-rate "decline is
spread evenly over the 90 percent of all potential offenders not affected
by 'three strikes' and the 10 percent who were."

As he put it to us, "to argue by analogy, the group that used Crest and the
group that didn't had the same number of cavities. That suggests strongly
that the law has no deterrent effect."

So the "three strikes" law puts people in prison for long periods whose
offenses don't warrant it, at great expense to taxpayers - and credible
evidence suggests it doesn't deter crime. The law needs to be changed to
apply only to violent crimes.