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October 29, 2004
Election Thoughts: Prop 66
Proposition 66 has 2 (related) effects:
First, it would create an additional threshold for invoking “3-strikes”. A third violation, in order to be eligible for 3-strikes under this proposition would need to be a violent crime.
Second, it would mandate re-sentencing under the new rules for everyone currently sentenced under the new rules...
There is very likely a (national) constitutional issue involving the second part of this act. Although, I can’t imagine think of how a sentence might go _up_ under this act, so I don’t think too many of the possible complainants actually complaining...
The first part is interesting. I’ve never seen conclusive evidence that 3-strikes has had an effect on crime, (quite simply, crime started to drop _before_ we enacted it, and the economy took off right when crime started to drop) but it seems likely that it has had some positive impact. So I don’t want to ditch the program altogether...
On the other wrist, this program won’t. What it will do is stop forcing me to pay to imprison non-violent criminals. In fact, under rational Choice-theory, it gives criminals incentive to not hurt me during robberies. Of course, I don’t expect criminals to be rational, so there’s that...
I’ll vote for this one. Keep the violent criminals in jail, get the pot-smokers out...
Posted by Andrew at October 29, 2004 09:20 PM
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