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How California’s Three-Strikes Law Struck Out

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The original three-strikes ballot measure passed in California in 1994, following the terrible murder-kidnapping of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was snatched from her own slumber party. The killer turned out to be a criminal with a violent past who was out on parole. That was all voters needed to hear to pass a measure that said it would keep “career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong.”

But as the Los Angeles Times pointed out in an editorial this week, it’s not clear that Californians intended to go beyond the rapists, murderers, and molesters to permanently lock up offenders like Norman Williams, whom I wrote about for the New York Times Magazine two years ago. Williams’ third strike was a conviction for petty theft in 1997: He stole the floor jack of a tow truck when he was homeless and addicted to drugs. His earlier crimes also weren’t the work of a hardened and dangerous career criminal: In 1982, he burglarized an empty apartment while it was being fumigated. After he was robbed at gunpoint on the way out, he helped the police find the stuff he’d stolen. In 1992, he tried to steal tools from an art studio. When the owner confronted him, he dropped everything and ran.

I'm not totally in favor of reducing sentences on "petty" criminals like this. Yes, I understand they are not the same as murderers, but when a guy gets locked up 3 different times for 3 different crimes, that's no longer a petty criminal, he's becoming a career criminal. And reduced sentences does nothing to discourage crime. (I know, there are arguments that incarceration is no deterrent, I say hooey to that--it defies logic and common sense).

Our cycle shop was robbed again yesterday. As luck would have it, it happened about an hour before I got there. A guy came in the store, looked around, spoke to the sales guys (two of them were working), and kinda loitered. That's not uncommon, people often come in an hang out. He waited till one guy went to the bathroom and then asked the other guy to look up a part in the catalog. While the guy was looking, the robber cut the security cable that secures the Go Pro cameras, grabbed them and ran out the door. Probably 8 cameras, at $300 each, a paltry $2400. But the real issue is, this kind of crime is not an isolated incident--it occurs daily all over the city. It is a culture to these people, and I am for locking them up for 20 years. That's 10 years for punishment, and 10 years for rehabilitation.

Maybe not for life, ok, but make them regret their actions, and thin down the herd of petty criminals, for god's sake.