Editorial:

We begin our argument to fix the Three Strikes Law with two basic understandings:

One fact is that minorities are disproportionately represented in our prison system. Minority incarceration can be attributed to many factors, including racial profiling and poverty. While Blacks make up 6% of the state population, they represent 29% of the prison population. Hispanics represent 33% of the state population and are now the majority population in prison. 34% of California prisoners are Hispanic.

The second fact is that the prison budget in the State of California has risen to the point that taxpayers are paying more for the prison system than education. The budget for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation increased from about 3 percent in 1980 to about 11 percent today. During the same time period, funding for UC and CSU dropped from 10 percent of the state’s general fund 30 years ago to about 6 percent today. It now costs approximately $45,000 per year to house a prisoner, the same that it would to send a student to Harvard.

In California, the Three Strikes law requires a mandatory 25 years to life prison sentence for the third conviction of criminals who have two prior felony convictions on their record.

The problem is that many of the third strike convictions are for petty theft and small-time drug offenses. These convictions result in non-violent offenders getting locked up for life at a cost of $45,000 per year. Non-violent offenders make up 40 percent of the third strike prison population. The continued cost of imprisoning non-violent petty criminals is going to continue to drive the prison budget up. Further, as these prisoners get older they will require more services and health care.

Prop 36 will revise the three strikes law in such a way that if a criminal has never – in any of his three convictions – used a firearm, molested a child, committed a serious violent act, sold drugs, or committed another serious felony, a judge would be able to use his discretion for sentencing. If, however, there is one “very bad” strike as previously described – either in the convict’s past or in the most recent crime, the three strikes law will remain in effect and the convict will be sentenced to a mandatory 25 years to life.

The final leg to this proposition is that it will allow for re-sentencing of three strike convictions already in prison if the third strike conviction was not serious or violent. This would affect about 4,000 prisoners who would be released from prison for time served.

It is projected that Prop 36 would save the state’s taxpayers between $70 million to $90 million a year in reduced prison costs.

The bottom line is that Prop 36 will take the less serious three strike convicts out of the loop for lifetime imprisonment. Meaning that felony convictions for individuals who are caught for marijuana possession, a felony, or petty theft would no longer be incarcerated for the rest of their lives. This does not mean they will go unpunished, they will still be held accountable, but they won’t be serve the mandatory 25 year to life sentence for crimes which do not justify that long of a sentence.

The Three Strikes law needs to be fixed and Prop 36 does this. We recommend the passage of Prop 36.