Three Strikes and You’re Out!

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Three Strikes and You’re Out! The impetus for California’s “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law originated in my home town of Fresno. The murder of Kimber Reynolds was a much publicized one in the area. Resisting the perpetrator’s attempted theft, she was shot to death on June 29, 1992. Said perpetrator was, Joe Davis, already a convicted felon, had seen release from prison only three weaks earlier. Afterwards, Kimber’s father Mike Reynolds met with an informal group of judges, attorneys and law enforcement reps to discuss sentencing practices. This case set the precedent for California’s “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law. Said California law requires that when a criminal is convicted of three felonies, he or she must serve a mandatory fixed sentence of twenty-five years to life, usually without parole. There are three types of offenses that qualify as a strike: Juvenile Offenses, Serious Felonies and Violent Felonies. Research of the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law on the Internet a will bombard the reader with a great deal of negative opinion. It can be difficult to find articles supporting the law. Three Strikes is ultimately a case of wide legislation overriding common sense and throwing a wrench in the works of legal practices, where it should be more on the level of an exception to certain case proceedings. One issue that the Three Strikes law brings into sharp relief is that of declining or ascending tendency toward crime. Since the law is predicated on the assumption of stopping further serious crimes before they happen from repeat perpetrators, as an attempt to curtail this, does it make potential criminal acts less or more serious? If a criminal knows he can get away with two lesser crimes before hitting the big wall of the Third Strike law the third time around, will they avoid breaking laws that put them in the target area for a serious or life

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