Suppose, for just a moment, you’re the parent of a young woman who was found dead – murdered – after being robbed. Then, imagine how knowing one of your daughter’s attackers was only sentenced to nine years in prison would make you feel. Many people – parents and people without children alike – feel helpless against a legal system that does not punish the guilty to the fullest extent of the law.
In a country that has the highest rates of violent crime in the world, the United States seems made for mandatory sentencing laws, such as California’s Three Strikes Law. This statute imposes mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for serious of violent felonies. Many critics of such laws cry, “Foul,” claming that these laws do not effectively lower the crime rate, but the evidence is clear. The mandatory sentencing guidelines of many states, including Alaska, are making streets safer by ensuring the proper sentencing for violent and repeat offenders is the same for every criminal. These guidelines force repeat offenders to spend more of their prison sentences in prison, not on probation or sitting in a county jail. In addition, the strict enforcement of the law deters others from committing crimes – thus lowering the crime rate.
Laws calling for mandatory minimum prison sentences for violent and repeat offenders make the streets safer because they make sentencing the same for all criminals, ensuring lenient judges cannot change the sentences on a whim. Written down in clear, easy-to-understand language, these laws provide a guideline for sentencing the dregs of human society. Criminals are sentenced under any of these laws, their sentences must be doubled for a second conviction. For a third offense, felons must receive a minimum of 40 – 99 years in prison. No one, from the blue-collar drug-addicted killer to the white-collar homicidal maniac, can be given a lighter sentence.
Another positive effect of these laws is that prisoners are being forced to spend the full extent of their sentences in prison. Where they may have once only spent 71 days of a 1-year sentence in jail, criminals are now being forced to do their time. In California, “time off for good behavior” has been reduced from a possible fifty percent of a prisoner’s sentence to a mere possibility of twenty percent of a sentence being reduced. In Georgia, inmates in prison in 1993 may only have to have completed twenty-six percent of their sentences before being released. However, in 1995, those same inmates would have had to complete thirty-nine percent of the sentence. With criminals staying in jail longer, fewer offenders are on the streets, ready to commit their crimes.
These laws also have a greater deterrent effect on possible repeat offenders. When criminals look at a possibility of life in prison for breaking into peoples’ homes and stealing televisions, they may consider the crime not worth the time. In the words of Gregory Gaines, an inmate recently released from California’s Folsom State Prison, “I’ve flipped 100%. It’s a brand new me, mainly because of the law. It’s going to keep me working, keep my attitude adjusted.” (Furillo) The law enforcement agencies have also noticed a deterrent effect. At Lt. Joe Enloe of Sacramento Police Department’s Homicide unit states, “You hear them [the criminals] talk about it all the time. It’s swift and sure, not like the death penalty. These guys are really squirming – they know what’s going on.” (Furillo)
As for the deterrent effect, anyone who looks at the crime rate statistics for states that have mandatory sentencing laws would know that these laws work. Since voting the guidelines into law, violent crime rates in Washington state have plummeted more than thirty percent. California’s Los Angeles County saw a 14.2 percent drop in crime right after the law was passed in 1995. These statistics alone substantiate the usefulness of strict law adherence.
Not only are its crime rates dropping, California is also losing its large parolee population. Since the law was passed the average of inmates out on parole petitioning to move out of state have increased while the number of out-of-state parolees petitioning to move into the state have decreased. Kern County District Attorney, Ed Jagels, goes to the prisons and teaches classes about the newer laws and how they affect the inmate populations. He says, “Many of them are talking about moving out of the state.” (Furillo) Even the criminals understand the changing statute scene and what it means for them specifically.
In a country with the highest violent crime rates in the world, a new dawn has come. With the passing of a law that treats every violent or repeat offender the same and forces inmates to spend the extent of their sentences in prison, statistics show that criminals are being deterred from committing new crimes and that crime rates are falling – thus making the nation’s streets much safer.
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