{"id":13597,"date":"2011-06-20T19:45:11","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T19:45:11","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-06-20T19:45:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T19:45:11","slug":"a-chance-to-change-3-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/20\/a-chance-to-change-3-strikes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chance to Change 3 Strikes?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Undoubtedly, &#8220;3 strikes&#8221; as a concept remains popular. &nbsp;But dig a little deeper and there are a lot of questions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The San Jose Mercury News reported last week that a group is crafting ballot language and seeking high-profile endorsements for an initiative that would require that a third strike result only from a serious or violent felony conviction. Under California&#8217;s law, a third strike can be assessed for any felony, at times bringing sentences of 25 years to life prison for those convicted of crimes like petty theft.<\/p>\n<p>On the same day the Mercury News article published, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.field.com\/fieldpollonline\/subscribers\/Rls2376.pdf\">Field Poll released survey results (PDF)<\/a> showing 74 percent of registered voters would support altering the three-strikes law. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thing is, back in 2006, Prop 66 had similar support before a horde of DAs and &#8220;ToughOnCrime&#8221; folks decided that discretion for judges just wasn&#8217;t necessary. &nbsp;Apparently we need a hard and fast rule that locks up thousands of people for sometimes rather petty crimes. &nbsp;The current 3-strikes prison count is at about 6% of the prison population, or about 8800 prisoners.<\/p>\n<p>We should hear something about this proposed change to the policy, and then we can proceed on whether it is a step in the right direction. &nbsp;But at this point, it is hard to see how anything could be worse than what we&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Undoubtedly, &#8220;3 strikes&#8221; as a concept remains popular. &nbsp;But dig a little deeper and there are a lot of questions:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The San Jose Mercury News reported last week that a group is crafting ballot language and seeking high-profile endorsements for an initiative that would require that a third strike result only from a serious or violent felony conviction. Under California&#8217;s law, a third strike can be assessed for any felony, at times bringing sentences of 25 years to life prison for those convicted of crimes like petty theft.<\/p>\n<p>On the same day the Mercury News article published, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.field.com\/fieldpollonline\/subscribers\/Rls2376.pdf\">Field Poll released survey results (PDF)<\/a> showing 74 percent of registered voters would support altering the three-strikes law. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thing is, back in 2006, Prop 66 had similar support before a horde of DAs and &#8220;ToughOnCrime&#8221; folks decided that discretion for judges just wasn&#8217;t necessary. &nbsp;Apparently we need a hard and fast rule that locks up thousands of people for sometimes rather petty crimes. &nbsp;The current 3-strikes prison count is at about 6% of the prison population, or about 8800 prisoners.<\/p>\n<p>We should hear something about this proposed change to the policy, and then we can proceed on whether it is a step in the right direction. &nbsp;But at this point, it is hard to see how anything could be worse than what we&#8217;re doing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[200],"tags":[620],"class_list":["post-13597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-200","tag-620"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3xj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}