Abstract

My essay on the Three Strikes Rule will explore this law from its inception to the present time, its impact on the California state government, and propose a solution to this problematic law. The Three Strikes Rule states that any offenders that committed any violent or serious felony offense (after two or more of the same conviction) are sentenced 25 years to life. I will present how crime has either increased or decreased since the 1990’s. What the perceptions of crime have been in our society. What polices has California put into place from the 1990’s to address crime. The costs and consequences of these policies and whether or not the Three Strike Rule has been worth it.

What has California done in
Politicians and policymakers looking to gain some support can easily manipulate this sense of fear that the media is able to conjure up in certain situations. In order for there to be rational crime control policy in the United States we need to have accurate information about the reality of crime in this country. In order for this to happen the media must provide an accurate depiction of crime that is constructed by a fair debate in the public arena of the media. There is a lot at stake in how we perceive the world around us and how we think about crime and punishment. If the media continues to disseminate fear instead of truth and allow the government and elites do define the world, then reality may be completely replaced with myth.

The state policies California put were Proposition 36 and Proposition 66. Many California residents experienced shocking events that influenced their negative opinion of the changes of “The Three Strike Policy”. In 2004, California implemented a change to Proposition 66 to amend California’s three-strike law policy. In the article, “Arguing Three Strikes” the author, Emily Bazelon, states that “Proposition 66 would have reduced the number of people going to prison for life by removing nonviolent property and drug offenses from the list of three- strikes crime”(Bazelon, 2010). Some of these offenses that the author was arguing about were minor charges