For Immediate Release: March 4th, 2004
Contact: Katya Kruglak, 703.304.5075
Vincent Schiraldi, 202.363.7847, ext 311
On 10th Anniversary of Three Strikes, New Study Shows Counties Using Three Strikes Less Frequently have Larger Declines in Crime than those that “Strike Out” More
African Americans “Struck Out” at 12 times the rate of Whites Most Strikes Defendants Sentenced For Nonviolent Offenses
Washington, DC: With the ten-year anniversary of the signing of California’s “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law approaching on March 7th, a new report shows that Three Strikes has contributed to California’s chronic prison growth, that the law disproportionately impacts African Americans, Latinos and people convicted of non-violent offenses, and that the law has had little impact on crime. Still Striking Out, authored by researchers with the Washington, D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute, also shows that the law has cost the state billions of dollars more in criminal justice spending, and has impacted over 46,000 children of incarcerated people.
“With California facing a $15 billion budget gap this year, and with little evidence that Three Strikes is providing the kind of crime-control impact its backers had hoped, California policymakers should seriously consider ending their ten-year experiment with the nation’s most costly and punitive Three Strikes law,” says Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute, co-author of the Still Striking Out, and the author of several other analyses of the Three Strikes law.
The report found that Three Strikes has not been associated with larger drops in crime, either among California counties or among states. Comparing California’s 12 largest counties, JPI found that, although the six counties that made the most use of the Three Strikes law had a Three Strikes rate that was twice as high as the low using counties, the heavy using counties did not experience greater reductions in crime. JPI found that counties that used Three Strikes least frequently actually had a decline in violent crime that was 22.5 percent greater than counties using Three Strikes the most frequently.
The report also shows that states that do not have a Three Strikes law had a larger average drop in violent crime between 1993 and 2002, and the non-Three Strikes states had a violent crime rate that was 29.5 percent lower than California’s in 2002, despite eight years of Three Strikes use. Between 1993 and 2002, New York — a non-Three Strikes state —saw its index crime rate drop 27.2 percent more than California’s (49.5% vs. 38.9%), and New York’s violent crime rate dropped 19.8 percent more than California’s (53.8% vs. 44.9%).
“Whether you compare California counties, or California to other states, the crime data tells us that you do not need a Three Strikes law to make communities safer,” says Scott Ehlers, co-author of the report. “If Californians are not getting the crime declines they should expect, should they be paying the price tag that comes with Three Strikes?”
The report also shows that the impact of California’s Three Strikes Law has not been borne equally between people of different races and ethnicities. The African-American incarceration rate for third strikes is 12 times higher than the third strike incarceration rate for Whites, and the Latino incarceration rate for a third strike is 45 percent higher than for Whites. For second and third strikes sentences combined, the African-American incarceration rate is over 10 times higher than the White incarceration rate; for Latinos its is 78 percent higher than the White rate.
The report also shows that by June 2003, second and third strikers made up 27.2 percent of the prison population, up from 3.5 percent in 1994. For 57 percent of third strikers, the offense which triggered their 25-years-to-life in prison was a non-violent offense, and nearly two-thirds (64.5%) of second and third strikers were serving time in prison for a non-violent offense. There were over ten times as many third strikers serving life sentences for drug possession (672) as second-degree murder (62). By last September, three hundred and fifty-four people were serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for petty theft under the Three Strikes law.
Replicating an analysis done by researchers commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice and using conservative assumptions, JPI estimates that those prisoners added to the prison system under Three Strikes between March 1994 and September 2003 have cost or will cost taxpayers an additional $8.1 billion in incarceration expenditures. Of those costs, $4.7 billion in added costs are a result of longer prison terms for people imprisoned for non-violent offenses. While these gross estimates based on admittedly limited data show that the law has cost the state billions, the authors recommend that that legislature or the executive branch conduct a study to provide a more exact accounting of the additional costs incurred by the state because of Three Strikes.
“California's version of Three Strikes has been out of step with justice since it was enacted,” says California State Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles). “This report shows just how draconian its consequences are and will continue to be, especially for African-American and Latino non-violent offenders. It's time for California to catch up with other states and ‘let the time fit the crime.’” Assemblywoman Goldberg recently introduced AB 2152 as a study bill to examine the costs of California’s sentencing laws, including Three Strikes.
JPI estimates that 46,700 children currently have a parent in the prison system because of Three Strikes, and that these youth will spend an average of 5.8 years longer away from their parent under Three Strikes as compared to before Three Strikes passed. The California Research Bureau and the Urban Institute have noted that children whose parents have been arrested and incarcerated can face emotional withdrawal, failure in school, delinquency and a higher risk of intergenerational incarceration.
“Not only is Three Strikes failing to reduce crime, but it may actually make things worse by removing people from their families where they can really make a contribution,” stated Dorsey Nunn, Program Director with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children. “It’s outrageous to deprive 46,000 children of a relationship with their parent for an extra 6 years for a law that doesn’t even work.”
Still Striking Out: 10 Years of California’s Three Strikes was researched and written by Scott Ehlers, Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg, and was published by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington DC-based research and public policy organization. Still Striking Out was funded by generous grants from the Fund for Non-Violence, the Open Society Institute’s U.S. Justice Fund and the Public Welfare Foundation. This report is embargoed until March 5th, 12:01 am E.S.T. (for Friday, March 5th papers), after which it will be available free at www.justicepolicy.org