The Right Three Strikes

...Addicted to drugs and homeless for the past nine years, Gordon had a record typical of small-time crooks: a few charges of drug possession, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and two convictions for theft...

...But what made the crime most frightening, what made this nightmare-come-to-life resonate so powerfully throughout the country, was that it seemed there was no longer anywhere to go to escape the violence...

...The simplicity of "three strikes and you're out," which liberals attack as shortsighted, betrays the fact that, in some cases, it makes a great deal of sense...

...In neither crime did Gordon act violently in any way...

...He had struck out...

...One is an unrepentantly violent man who targets individuals...

...His history of violence stretched back to his adolescence, when he would set cats on fire for fun...

...California, Washington, and Wisconsin are among those states that include some property and drug offenses...

...Where statutes remain imperfect, judges should be given wide discretion to overturn sentences imposed by "three strikes" when they are not appropriate...

...Many voters have begun to feel as if they have been hoodwinked, but perhaps none more than Marc Klaas, who has turned the Polly Klaas Foundation against the law it helped establish...

...Clark was a typical, dime-a-dozen crook...

...For these people, the Richard Allen Davises of the world, banishment is the only rational solution...

...Stinnett, on the other hand, broke into a woman's apartment one afternoon and raped her while holding a screwdriver to her neck...

...But once more typical criminals no longer represent a threat of violence, it's an enormous waste of money to keep them locked up, whether they were convicted under "three strikes" or not...

...So ask yourself: What kind of law would have kept Richard Allen Davis out of her neighborhood...

...Both Connecticut and Indiana wisely give the final power in sentencing to those who are best qualified to hold it: the judges...

...But when proponents of the bill correctly claimed that "three strikes and you're out" would have prevented Polly Klaas' murder, the idea took wing across the country...

...Unlike criminals, they do not have a strike to spare...

...Virginia, Connecticut, and Florida all ensure that only violent felons will face the full force of the law...

...Many others have not had Gordon's luck...

...In his State of the Union address, President Clinton also hyped "three strikes," saying it offered the country a way to be "tough and smart" about crime...

...We intended for the law to nail the Richard Allen Davises, that type of character," Klaas said...

...Because of the obvious threat to the community," his probation officer wrote in 1977 after an attempted kidnapping conviction, "it is believed there is no alternative but imprisonment...

...that will be on the Georgia ballot in November...

...It is important to remember that the primary reason behind "three strikes" is the protection of society from violence...

...Prison cells, though, are a limited commodity...

...Donald Clark and Kenneth Stinnett were part of one such exchange in Florida...

...By keeping non-violent prisoners behind bars for lengthy sentences, more first- and second-time violent offenders will be pushed out on the street, and given the opportunity to strike out...

...Several states' and the federal government's "three strikes" laws provide for geriatric release when it becomes clear that an ex-con poses no further threat to society...

...Supporters of 'three strikes' came to us right after we got my daughter back and said, 'We can put these people away for life before this kind of thing happens.' It sounded great to us...

...Gordon's victim, Karl Alexander, a 34-year-old hotel worker, stated publicly that Gordon's crime didn't merit the harsh sentence...

...The average American prison system already operates at 15.4 percent over capacity...

...Georgia Governor Zell Miller, too, has shown he is not bound by the baseball metaphor, proposing a "two strikes, you're gone" law aimed at truly violent criminals (murderers, armed robbers, aggravated assailants, rapists, etc...

...Predatory crime had moved to the suburbs...

...There was no explanation, no apparent motive...

...On March 8, the day after Governor Pete Wilson signed "three strikes" into California law, Steven Drake Gordon stole a wallet containing $100 from a bicyclist...

...But all judges should be given the power to do what Smith did...

...Take the case of Steven Drake Gordon, who holds the dubious distinction of being the first person in Sacramento to be prosecuted under "three strikes and you're out...

...On his release, it took him an average of less than five months to be rearrested...

...In response to the country's fear and desperation, politicians began touting "three strikes and you're out" as the solution to the problem of violence...

...His 15 convictions included an assortment of thefts and forgeries, but no violence of any kind...

...Charles Rangel said: "It's a knee-jerk political response to a very, very serious problem...

...Some states have shrewdly taken a more direct route to ensure violent offenders don't get early releases...

...Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, in The Washington Times, wrote that "three strikes and you're out" would "materially increase public safety and improve our citizens' confidence in the criminal justice system...

...In a rare act of judicial discretion, Smith sentenced Gordon to four to 10 years in prison...

...In this way, "three strikes and you're out" has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy...

...If "three strikes" is written with enough specificity, this should happen only rarely, because only the truly violent and unrepentant criminals will be prosecuted under the law...

...Such a case occurred in Sonoma County, California...

...There could be no better symbol of the spread of violence in America and of the failure of the criminal justice system to stop it...

...Sympathetic to the appeals of the victim and the jurors, Judge Peter Smith found a loophole by reducing the classification of Gordon's cash register heist down to a misdemeanor...

...Fisher's previous two felonies were thefts of $100 from a pizza parlor, and $390 from his grandfather...

...With a few exceptions made for the perpetrators of the most heinous crimes—had they not been executed, we still should have kept Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy behind bars the rest of their lives—mandatory life sentences should be rejected...

...As usual, the details that would make "three strikes" an intelligent response to America's problem of violence have been lost in the partisan noise of Washington and state capitals, with liberals and conservatives sticking to their ideological scripts without really thinking about how to make this work...

...On March 3, the California State Senate approved the bill 29 to 7 in the face of overwhelming public support...

...Thanks to "three strikes," he will die behind bars...

...Less than five years later, Davis was paroled...

...The federal system is one of the worst of all, operating at 38 percent over capacity, with all but one of its prisons under court order to reduce their number of inmates...

...The new federal crime bill includes "three strikes" as a central way, in the words of Vice President Gore, to put "a huge dent" in violent crime, despite projections that it will affect only 500 federal cases per year...

...Under normal circumstances, Fisher would be sentenced to about two years in prison...

...She had been strangled to death...

...By 2028, California expects to spend $21 billion building additional prisons...

...After an agonizing two-month search that drew international attention, police found the girl's body in a ditch only 35 miles from her home...

...Giving non-violent small-timers the same sentence as someone like Davis is absurd...

...The others are penny ante crooks out for an easy score...

...The answer is a law that targets only truly violent criminals who pose the greatest threat to society...

...With prison building budgets already shooting through the roof, legislators crafting their "three strikes" laws need to make hard choices about who warrants extended and expensive prison stays, and who does not...

...The key to crafting truly smart and tough "three strikes and you're out" bills is to remember Polly Klaas, the young girl whose murder got the country thinking about "three strikes" to begin with...

...If a judge rules that a life sentence is unfairly harsh or unnecessary, he may revert to the sentencing guidelines...

...But it took him only a year to be arrested again, this time for burglary and contributing to the delinquency of a minor...

...The Right Three Strikes The season's favorite get-tough solution to crime makes a lot of sense—once legislators learn to distinguish between violent and non-violent offenders BY DANIEL FRANKLIN On October 1, 1993, Richard Allen Davis broke into the suburban Petaluma, California home where 12-year-old Polly Klaas was having a slumber party with two of her friends...

...The consequences of indiscriminate sentencing go far beyond the economic...

...Connecticut, in fact, gives prosecutors the discretion to seek a life sentence if thej' determine that a two-time violent offender poses a continued threat to society...

...In New York, for example, mandatory sentencing (similar to the worst-case scenario under "three strikes") means such non-violent addicts serve anywhere from two to nine years in prison at a cost to state taxpayers of up to $58,000 per year and comprise one-eighth of the state's prison population...

...Under the new law, Gordon, as a three-time felon, faced 25 years to life in prison: roughly three times the sentence a convicted murderer would serve...

...The logical choice for early release would be the criminal who has no history of violence...

...Missamore would have faced a minimum of eight years in prison had not Judge Lawrence Antolini, a self-described conservative, ruled that the sentence violated the Eighth Amendment and sentenced Missamore to probation...

...While Polly's mother slept in the next room, Davis tied up the girls at knife point, and kidnapped Polly...

...Marking the difference between crimes against property and violence against people separates the good "three strikes" laws from the bad...

...And Fisher and Gordon are typical of what many strike-out victims will look like...

...Imprisoning addicted criminals for long sentences, however, shows no effect in preventing recidivism among them or reducing the overall rate of crimes they commit...

...Says Miller, "If you want three strikes in Georgia, you'd better join a baseball team...

...It was a feeling many state legislators began to share...

...He had struck out...

...State Senator Newton Russel said at the time, "I don't think we have any choice...

...Three strikes" should further stretch prison rolls...

...He was sentenced to 15 years in prison...

...We ought to see what we can do to keep these people out of jail...

...Too often in practice, the prosecutor assumes the powers normally held by the judge, leading to mistakes like Fisher...

...The police and prosecutors know who the bad guys are," said State Senator George Jepsen...

...In Washington state elections last November, for example, 76 percent of voters approved the state's version of "three strikes and you're out...

...The difference between Davis' crimes and those of Gordon and Fisher are clear...

...In the other corner, Rep...

...Those criminals who prove themselves incorrigible by committing three violent felonies would be sentenced to life in prison without hope of parole...

...Overall, treatment shows a higher success rate at a much lower cost...

...And more importantly, it reserves the prison cells for truly violent criminals—and for the big-time drug dealers...

...Jeffrey Dean Missamore, already in jail for one year for petty theft (a misdemeanor), was caught in prison with two marijuana joints, which is a felony...

...Because the law mandates the sentence, the criminal's punishment entirely depends on whether the prosecutor decides to try the defendant under "three strikes" or not...

...The bill was misrepresented to us...

...Most parole boards try to identify the prisoners who would pose the least threat to society, but sometimes they have no choice but to release violent criminals to make room for the non-violent...

...The Monthly has long argued that drugs should be legalized, but if criminalization remains the law of the land, then common sense dictates that precious prison space should be devoted not to the occasional user or the smalltime dealer (such as the inner-city kid who sells a few drugs on the street corner) but only to big-time dealers...

...Given the fact of overcrowding, prison officials must make room for every new prisoner by releasing another...

...But unexpected problems are already cropping up in the states that have "three strikes" laws...

...Yet another problem with "three strikes" is how the laws are overcrowding already overcrowded American prisons...

...After being convicted of stealing a rib roast from a grocery store, Clark was sentenced to 12 years in state prison under Florida's repeat offender law...

...In 1986, Gordon took $200 out of the cash register of a fast food joint in New York...

...Figuring in the increasing costs of health care, keeping an elderly convict in prison past 65 could cost up to $100,000 per year...

...I don't think anyone wants to put these small-time crooks away for life...

...Property criminals such as thieves are best left to the discretion of judges...

...Davis, then, became the man who killed America's child, and he had a profile worthy of the distinction...

...The 39-year-old had been arrested 17 times, including three times for kidnapping and sexual abuse...

...Because Missamore had already been convicted in 1986 of another felony the drug possession constituted his second felony strike and mandated imposing twice the normal sentence for the crime...

...The federal crime bill requires that the third strike be either violent or drug-related, but the first two counts can be simple property crimes...

...Gordon got lucky...

...Tightening the proverbial noose around violent criminals' necks requires more safeguards than most "three strikes" laws allow...

...Even with the $21 billion of new prisons it expects to build, California will not be able to adequately house the nearly 300,000 prisoners expected to be sentenced under the present "three strikes" law—which is more than all of Western Europe imprisons today...

...We thought it better to give them the opportunity to get violent criminals off the street before they get a chance to strike a third time...

...fornia for about a year, slowly gaining support, primarily among conservatives...

...Suddenly "three strikes and you're out" didn't look as fail-safe as Califorriians had thought...

...In an interview, Klaas said "three strikes" advocates, eager to attach the Klaas name to their cause, understated the bill's reach...

...When his daughter's body was found, Marc Klaas thanked the country for its concern and said he took comfort in the fact that Polly had become "America's child...

...But as Klaas realized the breadth of California's "three strikes" law, he began to see something he didn't like...

...The proposal had been floating around CaliResearch assistance provided by Phoebe Dean, Liz Greenspan, Celeste Katz, and Rachel Van Dongen...

...Even sillier than having "three strikes" apply to small-time dealers is having "three-strikes" apply to non-violent addicts who commit larcenies and other crimes to feed their habit...

...But on March 8, the morning after Governor Pete Wilson signed "three strikes and you're out" into California law, Gordon stole a wallet that contained $100 from a bicyclist...

...In the 11 months since Polly Klaas was abducted from her home, eight states added repeat offender laws and over 20 more are now considering such bills in their legislatures...

...But their wisdom is not pandemic...

...Of the 18 years prior to the Polly Klaas murder, Davis had spent 14 behind bars...

...Forty-two state prison systems are under court order to relieve prison overcrowding...

...In fact, one of the few positive aspects of the California law is that it imposes 25-years-to-life sentences, instead of mandatory life without parole...

...But even with the new prisons, California will not be able to adequately house the nearly 300,000 prisoners "three strikes" is expected to affect—which is more than all of Western Europe imprisons today...

...Another way some "three strikes" laws do not make sense is in keeping many of those convicted under the statutes in prison late into their lives...

...Legislators must get the laws right from the first step...

...This was the pattern of his adult life...

...An immediate way to prevent "three strikes" from replacing violent criminals with non-violent ones behind bars would be to eliminate both federal and state mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes such as possession or setting up a small drug deal between two people...

...Seven of the jurors who convicted him, who were unaware the crime was Gordon's third strike until they read it in the newspaper, sent letters to the judge saying Gordon deserved to be punished, but not as if he were a murderer...

...In Seattle, Larry Lee Fisher was recently sentenced to life in prison for his third strike, the theft of $100 from a sandwich shop...

...But on the day Clark began his sentence, Stinnett was released after having served only five and a half years...

...The average 65-year-old, for example, is as likely to commit a violent crime as a nine-year-old boy, and as he gets older, this probability decreases to nil...

...Accompanying Stinnett that day were three other rapists, two killers, and a kidnapper, each granted early parole as a result of the squeeze put on prisons...

...Unless states and the feds note the shortcomings of the California and Washington laws, they too will begin filling prisons with criminals like Fisher and Gordon...

...The decision to lock one person up means someone else must be released...

...Five years later, Gordon stole a woman's purse in Sacramento...

...Judge Peter Smith, who presided over Gordon's trial, displayed the most effective check against unfair sentencing: judicial discretion...

...Criminologists and psychiatrists agree that there are sociopaths with no care for the harm they inflict or fear of punishment they might receive...

...There is considerable evidence that once someone passes age 65, the likelihood of his breaking the law plummets and the costs of jailing him skyrockets...