Criminal Sentencing Law: Three Strike And You Re Out

In 1994, California legislators and voters made a change in the state’s criminal sentencing law, known as Three Strike and You’re Out. This law was passed after several high profile murders were committed by ex-felons. These ex-felons made communities concerned that violent offenders released from prison would go on to perpetrate serious, violent crimes. The Three Strikes law had a minimum sentence of twenty-five years to life for three-time great offenders who had multiple priors of violent felony convictions. This law had longer prison sentences for certain repeat offenders and required sentence intensifications for convicted felons who had previously committed violent felonies. However, the Three Strikes law offered repeat offenders twenty-five years to life for nonviolent felonies, which raised concerns about the Constitution’s Eight Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. This resulted to some challenges to this law. …show more content…
There are also third strike offenses which convict previously violent felons who commit another felon to have a life term with the minimum being twenty-five years. With this said, each country has their own variation of applying the law. Under the Three Strikes law, more criminal cases go to trial, which coincides with an increase of local jail inmates. The Three Strikes law has effected prison populations to an extreme amount. The sentence length of a momentous fragment of the inmate population has increased, this has led to a flourishing and aging prison