By Wendy Thomas Russell
Staff writer
This is a reproduction of the Long Beach Press-Telegram series on Three Strikes. Dated November 2, 2000. |
| LANCASTER Rap music plays softly on a radio as Carl Jones steps into his cell at Lancaster State Prison and clicks on an overhead light. |
| The 38-year-old Los Angeles man convicted five years ago of burglarizing Crenshaw High School is one of hundreds of "third strikers" now serving 25-years-to-life sentences in Los Angeles County's largest penitentiary. |
| Jones says he was caught, empty-handed, crawling out of a window on campus. His prior "strikes" were two burglaries, in 1989 and 1990. |
| His new home, a 10-by-6-foot concrete cell that he shares with another inmate, is as comfortable as it can be with a metal sink and lid-less toilet affixed in one corner. |
| Bunk beds take up half of the cramped but clean living space, and pictures of Jones' three children, ages 12 to 18, adorn one wall. A single shelf opposite the bunk beds brims with personal items: magazines, snack food, a television set. |
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| Carl Jones, 48, sits in his cell at Lancaster State Prison, serving a thrid-strike sentence for second-degree burglary. His priors were two burglaries in 1989 and 1990. |
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| Third-striker Randy Johnson, 40, stands below a warning sign indicating that guards will shoot directly at prisoners if a fight breaks out. He is serving a third-strike sentence for heroin possession. |
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