{"id":379,"date":"2011-12-22T13:17:30","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T18:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/?p=379"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:18:47","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T16:18:47","slug":"three-strikes-reform-in-california-make-a-wish-for-the-new-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2011\/12\/22\/three-strikes-reform-in-california-make-a-wish-for-the-new-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-strikes reform in California? Make a wish for the new year."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>California, distinguished among other ways by having the country&#8217;s most &#8220;indiscriminately punitive&#8221; three-strikes law, has allowed a ballot initiative to go forward that would modify it to exempt non-violent criminals.\u00a0This welcome change is largely financially motivated: the state&#8217;s economy is a well-acknowledged growing disaster and the state auditor estimates the\u00a0<a title=\"Open Web Site\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bsa.ca.gov\/pdfs\/reports\/2009-107.2.pdf\" rel=\"external\">cost<\/a>\u00a0of imprisoning nonviolent three-strikes offenders for 25 years is $4.8 billion; further, California\u00a0must reduce its prison population from roughly 135,000 inmates to 110,000 two years from now to comply with the Court order on overcrowding after Brown v. Plata (see prior posts, <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2011\/06\/25\/resources-on-brown-v-plata\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/2011\/10\/01\/realignment-begins-in-california-prisons-today\/\">here<\/a>). Nonetheless, the editors of Bloomberg news\u00a0warn us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2011-12-21\/california-prisons-can-t-afford-costly-three-strikes-law-view.html\">here<\/a> that this effort will face\u00a0powerful opposition from the correction-officers union, many California prosecutors, and politicians fearful of the political consequences of supporting it.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a little context from the article that makes the fact that we can expect controversy over this initiative seem truly remarkable: the state has imposed sentences of 25 years to life for third strikes such as shoplifting a pair of socks and prying open the door to a church food pantry; further,\u00a0&#8220;California will spend roughly $10 billion on prisons this year &#8212; more than it spends on its once-renowned higher education system&#8221; (ouch).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California, distinguished among other ways by having the country&#8217;s most &#8220;indiscriminately punitive&#8221; three-strikes law, has allowed a ballot initiative to go forward that would modify it to exempt non-violent criminals.\u00a0This welcome change is largely financially motivated: the state&#8217;s economy is a well-acknowledged growing disaster and the state auditor estimates the\u00a0cost\u00a0of imprisoning nonviolent three-strikes offenders for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8,9,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-legislation","category-sentencing","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/plap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}