Pros And Cons Of 3 Strikes Law

The Flaws In The Three Strikes Law The Three Strikes Law was originally enacted in 1994 in California. The law came about in 1992 when a young innocent girl named Kimber Reynolds from Fresno was murdered in an attempted purse snatching by two convicts who had previously just finished serving their times in prison. Immediate after the death of Kimber, her father Mike was inspired to take action to help prevent innocent people from getting harmed by criminals. Mike Reynolds and his group put together a law and named it, “Three Strikes and You’re Out!” law. They then successfully collected enough signatures to qualify for a statewide referendum. As a result, an astonishing number of 72 percent of the state’s voters were in favor of it and eventually …show more content…
The intended purpose of this law was to keep murderers, kidnappers, rapists, and molesters in prisons away from the society. However, in contrast, Stanford Three Strikes Projects (STSP) provides some examples of sentences for individuals who were sentenced under the Three Strikes law, “Project clients have been given life sentences for offenses including stealing one dollar in loose change from a parked car, possessing less than a gram of narcotics, and attempting to break into a soup kitchen” (Stanford Law School, “Stanford Three Strikes Project”). Notwithstanding the hope of putting the murderers, kidnappers, rapists, and molesters away for good, the imprisonment of majority of convicts who were sentenced under the Three Strikes Law are serving their unjust sentences for committing nonviolent and non-serious crimes. Even though Proposition 36 was passed in California and changed the third strike of the law to be a serious or violent crime, the intended purpose of this law is still basically skewed with its implementation for the first two strikes since the prison cells are senselessly being filled with inmates with petty, non-serious