life. They are serious felonies and they accurately reflect a record of acts that show a disregard of risk to human life. In my view, they are appropriate factors to consider in assessing the nature of the defendant's criminal disposition.

Another argument regarding the Three Strikes Law is that it costs too much. It costs approximately $21,000 to $22,000 a year to incarcerate a single prisoner. Let me make the point that goes unstated when such arguments are made - crime costs society a great deal of money. Such arguments fail to acknowledge that society in general is benefited economically from reduced crime rates. How much is saved if a murder doesn't occur? How much is saved if the burglary and robbery rates go down? To consider relative costs, one must consider not only what it costs to keep career criminals in custody but also how much it costs to let them out of custody. These are career criminals. Crime is what they do.

In the research report, Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look (the National Institute of Justice, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice, 1996) an extensive study was done regarding the tangible (actual measurable) costs of crime and the intangible (emotional and psychological effects) costs. The resulting conclusions were that murder has a tangible cost of $1,030,000.00 and a $1,910,000.00 intangible cost for an aggregate cost per murder of $2,940,000.00. Rape and sexual assault have a tangible cost of $5,100.00 and an intangible cost of $81,400.00 for an aggregate cost of $86,500.00. The aggregate cost of robbery with injury is $19,000.00. Assault costs society $9,350.00 and each burglary costs the public $1,400. The tangible costs were calculated based on the National Crime Victimization Survey. Intangible costs were based on studies that measured a range of factors from loss of productivity to mental disabilities. Of course, one cannot measure the actual anguish caused by crimes like murder, assault, burglary, etc. The only perspective for purposes of objective observation must look to measurable factors. Thus, while we put an economic price on murder, we acknowledge that all life is priceless. However, the cost of crime can be measured

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