 |
please contact the Webmaster
Support the Badge
Return to Home Page
|
|||
| Home | Articles | Book Page | Links | Mike's Corner | Search | Studies | Contact Us | |||
| For the reasons discussed earlier in this paper, the changes to "Three Strikes" in the initiative will be extended to all prisoners of our state prison who are serving "strike" sentences. The immediate impact of this benefit, which the initiative provides may not be waived by the prisoner, will be the unloading of tens of thousands of state prison inmates into county jails for reconsideration of their sentences. That immediate impact will be followed by a second immediate impact of the appointment at public expense of thousands of criminal defense attorneys to represent these prison inmates on their re-sentencings. All of these returned prisoners will be entitled to obtain new probation reports - again at public expense. | |||
| The economic impact upon the county jails, the criminal justice system, and the taxpayers who pay for county jails and the judicial system will be horrendous. | |||
| But the most significant harm from this wholesale release will be the result of these re-sentencings. Every "strike" prisoner whose sentence would be affected by the initiative's penalty reductions discussed in Part II of this paper, will have his or her prison sentence reduced, and many of these prison sentences would be reduced so greatly that the courts will be obligated to immediately release these prisoners from custody. While I do not know the precise number of prisoners who would be entitled to immediate release by virtue of this initiative, it is safe to say that passage of the initiative will result in the immediate release of large numbers of "Three Strikes" prisoners and the drastic reduction in the sentences of many of those "Three Strikes" prisoners who will remain in prison after the initiative passes. | |||
| Because residential burglary is a major component of "strike" sentences, and the initiative would delete residential burglary from the serious felony list, and because almost two thirds of the two-strike prisoners are serving prison sentences for current crimes that are neither serious nor violent felonies, the number of "strike" defendants who would be immediately released from state prison would probably be in the tens of thousands. | |||
| The impact of the wholesale release from prison of tens of thousands of men and women who have committed serious and violent felonies in their long criminal careers is made clear when one understands just who these people are who are serving prison terms under "Three Strikes." They were best described by Justice Bedsworth in People v. Edwards (2002) 97 | |||
| Next Page | |||
| If you have any problems with this site please contact the Webmaster |
|||
Support the Badge Return to Home Page |