California voters to get a swing at "three strikes": three strikes statute, Penal Code Section 667 (1994); Proposition 183, three strikes and you're out.

• Author: Lyons, Donna
• Position: On Reconsideration

THE ACT'S GOALS

The intent of the Legislature and the voters, both of which passed "three strikes" sentencing law in 1994, was to close the revolving door that sends repeat offenders back onto the streets to commit more crimes. With serious crime on the rise in the early 1990s, the objective was to better protect the public by imprisoning dangerous offenders.

WHAT THE ACT DOES

It imposes a 25-year-to-life mandatory prison sentence on offenders who have committed two serious or violent crimes and who commit a third felony offense, which does not have to be a violent offense and does include some drug crimes and burglary. The law also doubles penalties for a second serious or violent felony.

On the 10th anniversary of California's "three strikes you're out" sentencing law, it remains an epitome of the get-tough movement that characterized crime policy in the 1990s. And the measure that imposes 25 years to life in prison for a third felony conviction still sparks the kind of controversy that is sending it back before California voters in November.

"Three strikes" was first coined and successfully carried out in the 1993 fall elections in Washington state, where voters approved a Persistent Felony Offender Act requiring life without possibility of parole for third-time serious felony offenders. Even though many states already enhanced sentences for repeat violent offenders, the three-time loser notion caught on, and 24 states passed such laws.

Nowhere has "three strikes" been applied more broadly, enthusiastically and visibly than in California. Researchers at the University of California, Berkley, estimated in 1999 that more than 90 percent of "three strikes" sentences handed down nationally had been in that state. California is a huge, populous state and that is part of the reason.

And the law was written to include a number of violent felonies, along with some 25 other serious felonies.

The law requires the long, mandatory prison sentence when anyone with two prior convictions for serious or violent felonies is convicted of a third felony. The third offense does not have to be a violent crime and includes some drug crimes and burglary. The law also doubles penalties for a second serious or violent felony.

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This expansive strike zone quickly resulted in news stories of cases in which mandatory prison terms were imposed on a third-strike pizza thief, an offender who stole golf clubs and another who shoplifted videotapes...