THREE STRIKES LEGISLATION
Three strikes laws are acts passed by state administration in the United States needs the state magistrate’s bequeath the extended and compulsory time of imprisonment to one who has been found guilty for a solemn of offenses on more than three instances. This law is important since it increases jail verdicts for a person villain of offenses who had been formerly convicted for a serious felony and it reduces the ability of this person to receive chastisement other than the prison judgment (Kieso, 2005, p.45). While recidivism is act of a person replicating the same crime after having gone under rehabilitation or being trained to quench that behavior and a recidivism rates need to be placed on such a person to deter him/her from serious felony.
Three strikes law legislation aims at protecting the society from person who has shown pattern of lawbreaking. It weakens repeated crimes offenders by imprisoning them and prevents other from committing similar offences. With the application of ‘three strikes law and you’re out’ the number of offences committed has abruptly decreased in the last 8years. Through these statistics we can clearly see that the law has positive impact on the recidivism rates. On the other hand, three strikes law has faced criticism as it has brought overcrowding in the prison and it fail to extinguish negative behavior (Hawkins & Kamin, 2003, p.113).
The minimum detention center verdict in the three strikes law is twenty five years to life imprisonment as passed by the central administration and 24 states in two decade away. Person convicted for misdemeanor should be given a life imprisonment incase he/she has committed as serious felony such as sexual offence, terrorism, murder and rape cases. When an offender has committed a crime such as drug abuse, corruption and robbery in the three strike law should not be given a life imprisonment but a penalty equivalent or more than the crime committed. The statistic carried out in 2005 shows that the recidivism rates in the United States for the released person is 60 percent while that of United Kingdom is 10% less and hence their in a need for imposing three strikes laws in the states (Hawkins & Kamin, 2003, p.173). A research carried out in 2004 show that in California sixty five percent of the third- strike criminals were forcedly accused and only 25% of the convicts were in the third law misdemeanors. The data also indicates that third law has been enforced twelve times more on the blacks as compared to the whites. For instance in California, forty eight convicts were facing three strikes law and only 1,237 offenders were whites and the rest were blacks with the majority being the African American (Greenwood, 1995, p. 97).
Studies also indicate that in California it was envisaged that application of third strikes laws in the states had resulted to a scarcity of seventy thousand beds in the prison. In additional to this, studies predicted in 2023 there will be an 80% increase in the number of inmates between fifty and sixty five years while that of inmates above 65 years will be 144%. This will have a negative effect on the economy due the high cost of living as a lot of funds will be channeled to cater for aged prisoner. As the data indicate that state spent one thousands dollar to cater for remedial expenses for an average convict and more than 5000 U.S. dollar on an aged inmate (Kieso, 2005, p. 66).
Hence third strikes legislation is imposed to a person who has committed a series of crimes. This is done to rehabilitates the person and prevents him and other from committing that crime in future. Conversely, a third strike has lead to overcrowding and many seeing that it does not bring any impact on the offender.
REFERENCES
Kieso, D. (2005). Unjust sentencing and the California three strikes law (criminal justice: recent
scholarship). Texas: LFB Scholarly publishing LLC.
Greenwood, P. (1995). Three strikes and you’re out: estimated benefits and costs of California’s
new mandatory-sentencing law. California: Rand Corporation.
Hawkins, G. & Kamin, S. (2003). Punishment and democracy: three strikes and you’re out in
California (studies in crime and public policy). New York: Oxford university press.
