The purpose of the Three Strikes Law is isolation of those who demonstrate a repeated disposition of criminal behavior without requiring that the new criminal behavior be necessarily serious or violent. It simply need be reflective of further felonious activity. In simple terms, to isolate those who have shown a clear disposition towards serious and violent criminal behavior whenever they committed any new felony. It was intended that this would result in two consequences: eliminating the further criminal behavior of habitual criminals and, hopefully, halting their criminal behavior with a lower grade "triggering" felony before they committed more serious or violent crimes for which they had shown a disposition.

The difficulty in identifying such individuals is the predictability factor. Clearly, one could simply identify all first time offenders who commit a certain type of act to receive life sentences. But not only would such an approach be overly broad, it would characterize disposition by a single act regardless of circumstance. Therefore, the focus was on identifying factors that narrowly defined habitual offenders with a high degree of predictability.

Initially, a target group was identified- not simply people who committed crimes but people who have demonstrated a repeated pattern of criminal behavior. Not just people who have engaged in repeated criminal behavior but individuals who represented a substantial risk of harm in their criminal behavior. What appears obvious was also assumed: people don't get arrested and convicted for many or most of the crimes they commit.

It was accepted that a relatively small group committed the large percentage of crime. In the study, Delinquency in a Birth Cohort, (Wofgang, Figlio, and Sellin (1972)) a review was conducted of 9,945 males born in Philadelphia in 1945. They were tracked through their 18th birthday in 1963. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the percentage of offenses committed by the group. The ultimate conclusion was that 6% of the offenders in the group accounted for 52% of all arrests within the group. In addition,

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