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Correctional Development 3 Strikes
As California goes, some say, so goes the nation. There is little doubt but that the single most important event in recent correctional history in the nation's progressive state was the development of the Three Strikes laws. Having accepted this idea, the state is now faced with massive budget shortfalls and is confronting federal court orders to immediately and dramatically reduce its prison populations simply because it is too full to treat appropriately all of those put into prison under this get-tough idea.
The Three Strikes law came about following a number of specific crime incidents and legislative actions. A timeline of the evolution of these events has been developed by National Public Radio. The key elements of the effort began formally with Republican Governor Pete Wilson signing the originating legislation into law in March 1994. The law was recognized as being more severe than the approaches of other states, but basically a mandatory life sentence was required for persons convicted of three felonies (though in actuality the person could be paroled after 25 years). Apparently not yet satisfied,...
From that point forward, various legal challenge and sensational stories kept the issue alive (such as the case of a person getting life for stealing a slice of pizza) and approved the concept. By the year 2000, the public was coming to grips with the impact of its decision and passed Proposition 36, which allowed offenders with drug use problems to get treatment instead of just prison time. In 2006, after the efforts of several legislators that would require the third offense to be a serious or violent offense, Governor Schwarzenegger refused to change the law, leaving it predominately in place and controlling California's get-tough strategies until today. [1: Tanya Ballard Brown. "Timeline: The Evolution Of California's Three Strikes Law," National Public Radio. Accessed January 26, 2012 at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114250301. ]
By 2009, however, California was confronted with a reality that it would not be able to…
The Three Strikes law came about following a number of specific crime incidents and legislative actions. A timeline of the evolution of these events has been developed by National Public Radio. The key elements of the effort began formally with Republican Governor Pete Wilson signing the originating legislation into law in March 1994. The law was recognized as being more severe than the approaches of other states, but basically a mandatory life sentence was required for persons convicted of three felonies (though in actuality the person could be paroled after 25 years). Apparently not yet satisfied, the public followed that move by passing a state electoral initiative that added more stringency to the law, hoping to make it difficult for judges to waiver in the sentences they provided. From that point forward, various legal challenge and sensational stories kept the issue alive (such as the case of a person getting life for stealing a slice of pizza) and approved the concept. By the year 2000, the public was coming to grips with the impact of its decision and passed Proposition 36, which allowed offenders with drug use problems to get treatment instead of just prison time. In 2006, after the efforts of several legislators that would require the third offense to be a serious or violent offense, Governor Schwarzenegger refused to change the law, leaving it predominately in place and controlling California's get-tough strategies until today. [1: Tanya Ballard Brown. "Timeline: The Evolution Of California's Three Strikes Law," National Public Radio. Accessed January 26, 2012 at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114250301. ]
By 2009, however, California was confronted with a reality that it would not be able to get around: It now has too many people in its prisons. A three-judge federal court review panel looked at California's system and ordered major reductions of prisoners, noting that the existing system was unable to maintain adequate health, mental health and related protections for the prisoners. California challenged the ruling but has now come face-to-face with the fact that the court's recommendations would have to stand. And now that state is being forced to undertake specific reforms that center on "shortening sentences, diverting nonviolent felons to county programs, giving inmates good behavior credits toward early release, and reforming parole." Tens of thousands of people are now being sent from state facilities to county facilities, which will likely force lesser offenders out of those jails even though there are few if any community correctional programs to send them to. As the panel put it: "The evidence is compelling that there is no relief other than a prisoner-release order that will remedy the unconstitutional prison conditions." [2: Solomon Moore, "Court orders California to cut prison population." February 9, 2009. The New York Times. Accessed on January 26, 2012 at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10prison.html. ]
As recently as 2002, the ACLU was actively challenging the concept, posting on its website 10 reasons why Three Strikes was bad law (http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/10-reasons-oppose-3-strikes-youre-). Professionals in the field of criminal justice saw the experience differently, and in 2007, the editors of The Journal of the Institute for the Advancement of Criminal Justice offered an issue dedicated to why the law was working. As the editor of that publication put it, "The 'worst of the worst' are in prison where they belong, not in our neighborhoods committing more crimes and creating more victims. Three Strikes has slammed shut what was once a revolving door for career criminals." Perhaps, but the cost of doing this has been tremendous and the state may be swelling with opposition as the cost of stopping the worst offenders means putting to many other criminals back on to the streets. [3: David W. Paulson. IACJ From the Editor's Desk. Issue 1, Summer 2007. Accessed on January 26, 2012 at http://www.iacj.org/PDF/IACJJournalIssue1.pdf. ]
DNA in Criminal Cases - Solving Cold Cases in California with Forensic Science This research will attempt to analyze and discuss the feasibility of DNA testing in solving cold cases and will study the impact that DNA fingerprinting has had on the forensic science community as a whole. DNA is generally used to solve crimes in one of two ways. In cases where a suspect is identified, a sample of that person's
Workplace Harassment Policy Introduction The way that a society treats its criminals is indicative of the moral character and worthiness of that society. While it is easy for us to ignore and disregard the criminals amongst us by leading them to prison and throwing away the key, an important lesson is lost in this disregard for the human experience. In California the intolerance of violent crime and action has led to the
Written into the legal changes would be protocols for review of cases to re-determine parole eligibility in certain cases but especially those where the latter crimes were non-violent and relatively minor offences. Because of this review aspect the legal and physical changes of this alternative is the most effective in both the short-term and long-term, of dealing with prison overcrowding. This alternative was chosen, not because it is the
S. General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates' in 1991 stated that nearly 30% of those incarcerated had used drugs daily in the month before committing the offense for which they were in prison. By the year 2003 there were approximately 6.9 million individuals either on probation, in mail, or in prison which equals 32% of all U.S. adults residents or 1 out of every 32 adults. (U.S. Bureau of Justice Corrections
Evolution of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 Most Americans regard the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 as the most comprehensive and far-reaching anti-crime bill in the country's history. The Act, which took up more than 1000 pages and an approximate $30 billion in costs, covered an overwhelming array of areas ranging from funding for late-night youth basketball programs to a ban on
Variations of the area court model, such as teen courts, medicine courts, and household physical violence courts, focus on specific concerns in order to establish even more extensive options. The underlying presumption of neighborhood courts is that neighborhoods are deeply damaged by the sentencing procedure yet are seldom spoken with and associated with judicial results. Correcting Community justice has actually been slowest to show up in the correctional industry. Maybe this