Families to Amend California's Three Strikes

We are Families and Friends to Amend California's Three Strikes Law. The law was originally intended to help keep violent career criminals off the streets. However, the way it has been applied has meant that nearly 65% of those incarcerated under the 3-Strike Law are charged with non-violent offenses. The non-violent offenders, some with charges as minor as being in possession of stolen property, are required to serve their complete sentence of 25 years to life without the chance of being paroled any sooner. While California has focused tax payer money on keeping these non-violent people off the streets, the state’s educational system is now ranked at the bottom of the nation in many categories. In fact, California is ranked higher than only Mississippi and Arizona in terms of the percentage of high school students that attend 4-year universities. In addition, more than one-fourth of California middle and high school students attend schools that are defined as overcrowded. This rate increases to two-thirds for those students that attend intensely segregated minority schools. (For more alarming educational statistics and source information please read the blog “How the Current 3-Strikes Law is Adversely Affecting Our Future”.) A further slam to California’s educational system is that the legislators recently passed the AB900 bill that will result in 7.7 billion dollars being spent to build more prisons. This means even less money for secondary and higher level education. Question….If the California 3-Strikes Law in its current form was being so effective, why are more prisons being built? More importantly, is this law having a positive effect on our violent crime rate? The answer is “no”. In fact, when the violent crime rates are compared across the nation, states with no 3-Strike laws have been experiencing greater declines in violent crime compared to those states with 3-Strike laws. This same trend can be seen when violent crime rates are compared among California counties that apply the law more harshly than those that use it less frequently. For example, in San Francisco, where this law is only applied for violent crimes, there was a larger decline in serious and violent crimes compared to Fresno where the law is applied more heavily. These are only a few of the reasons that we need your help to amend this law. We need to come together to make a statement that being “tough” on crime is not always as important as being “smart” on crime especially when it comes at the expense of our future generations. The money that could be saved in amending this law to only apply to violent offenders could then be used to improve our education system, implement community based prevention programs, and to focus on rehabilitation programs in prison, all of which are proven to help reduce crime. That approach makes a statement that California residents want to create a legacy of safer communities for generations to come. After all, the crimes have already been committed once people are in prison. Isn’t it everyone’s goal to prevent these crimes from happening in the first place?Plain MySpace Layouts by Iron Spider