VOTERS SHOULD GET TO PASS JUDGMENT ON THREE-STRIKES LAW

MORE than 650 people are serving life sentences in California prisons for
possessing small amounts of drugs; 344 are facing life for stealing small
amounts of goods.

The annual cost of imprisoning each averages $27,000 a pop. That's $27
million for the bunch and $270 million over a decade. Add in the extra
freight for an aging prisoner' pills and medical bills, and you begin to
see the stiff price of California's three-strikes law.

When voters overwhelmingly passed three-strikes as an initiative in 1994,
they had the abduction and murder of Polly Klaas in mind. They wanted to
put away repeat, violent criminals so they wouldn't prey on people again.

The three-strikes law has done that. But the initiative also overreached to
include thieves, drug users and forgers. Any felony and even some
misdemeanors, normally punishable in terms of months, qualified as a third
strike, bringing a mandatory 25 years to life imprisonment.

Whether voters intended to do that at the time, surveys indicate that large
majorities now are having second thoughts. They say they'd like
three-strikes sentences to be imposed only on those with a history of
violent crimes.

The only way to know for sure what they think, though, is to give voters a
second chance and an opportunity to amend the law. That's what
Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg would do, with AB 112.

The bill would put a measure on the ballot asking voters to limit the third
strike to repeat violent or serious felons; the latter includes arsonists
and home burglars. The measure would also give those already convicted of a
non-violent or non-serious third strike felony the opportunity to have a
judge review their sentences.

More than half of the state's 7,600 third-strike convictions have been of
non-violent offenses. The ballot measure would establish the balance that
the current three-strikes law, the nation's strictest, lacks.

Passage won't come easily. Opponents are distorting the effects of the
change while resurrecting soft-on-crime claptrap to intimidate legislators.
Republican Assembly Leader Dave Cox characterized AB 112 as part of liberal
Democrats' ``criminal-friendly agenda'' that ``could threaten public safety
by releasing dangerous criminals back into society.''

Earlier this month, by a single vote, 5-4, the Supreme Court upheld the
constitutionality of the state's three-strikes law. The challenge of
moderating it now falls back on California's voters. The Legislature should
give them that opportunity by passing AB 112.