Commentary
Javier Starling and Geraldine Washington,
Justice Policy Institute
This year, voters in California will have an opportunity to change the Three Strikes Law. By voting for Proposition 66, we can return Three Strikes to the original intent of the voters and focus it exclusively on violent offenders. This would make the law fairer and more effective, and would be a start in creating the kind of criminal justice system that all Californians deserve.
New research released this month by the Justice Policy Institute reveals that African Americans and Latinos are far more likely to be imprisoned under California’s Three Strikes law than their white counterparts. African Americans are sent to prison for life under Three Strikes at nearly 13 times the rate of whites while Latinos' rate of incarceration under the Three Strikes law is 82 percent higher than whites.
Worse still, nearly two-thirds of those imprisoned under Three Strikes are locked up for non-violent offenses—crimes like stealing a package of AA batteries, buying a macadamia nut thinking it was a rock of crack cocaine, or writing a bad check for $94. This is a far cry from the “tough on violent crime” approach most voters thought they were enacting in 1994. It is bad public policy, and is made even worse by the racial disparities: Latinos and African Americans tend to be increasingly drawn into the system at greater and greater rates.
African Americans constitute only 7 percent of the state population, but they make up 22 percent of the felony arrests, 30 percent of the prison population, 36 percent of the second strikers and 45 percent of the third strikers. Conversely, whites constitute 47 percent of the population but only 36 percent of felony arrests and 29 percent of the prison population. Whites are 26 percent of second strikers and 25 percent of third strikers. Comparing the rates of arrests per 100,000 people, African Americans are arrested at 4.4 times the rate of whites, imprisoned at 7.5 times the rate of whites, and 'struck out' for life at nearly 13 times the rate of whites.
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