"Three Strikes and You're Out": The Impact of California's New Mandatory Sentencing Law on Serious Crime Rates (From Criminal Courts for the 21st Century, P 383-392, 1999, Lisa Stolzenberg and Stewart J. D'Alessio, eds. -- See NCJ-186588)

• NCJ Number: 186601
• Author(s): Lisa Stolzenberg; Stewart J. D'Alessio
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 10 pages
• Sale Source: Prentice Hall (Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc)
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications from Crime & Delinquency, vol. 43, (1997), pp. 457-469.

Annotation

This article analyzes the effect of California's three-strikes law on serious crime rates in the 10 largest cities in the State.

Abstract

Time-series data for the 1985-95 period were obtained from the California Department of Justice, Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The three-strikes law had little observable influence on either the California Crime Index rate or the petty theft rate. The article discusses several possible explanations for the law's negligible effect on serious crime: (1) current sentencing practices already confine a substantial proportion of high-risk offenders behind bars; (2) the effectiveness of three-strikes legislation as a crime control strategy depends on the duration of criminal careers (by the time offenders are confined for their third strike, their criminal careers usually are on the decline, if not concluded); and (3) juvenile offenders in California are not affected by the three-strikes law, so it seems unlikely that juvenile crime was affected in any substantial way by the three-strikes law. Figures, table, notes, references