Rehabilitate Three-Strikes Law ... but Do It the Right Way

There is a broadening consensus that includes prominent law enforcement officials that California's three-strikes law desperately needs to be fixed. Intended to put repeat violent offenders behind bars for 25 years to life, the law has also swelled the prison population by incarcerating nonviolent criminals for decades. More than 350 men and women have been sent to prison for 25 years to life for such crimes as shoplifting a pair of sneakers or a bottle of Tylenol, or lying on a driver's license application. More than 670 others have received the same harsh sentence for possession of a small amount of drugs. All told, nearly 57% of California's roughly 7,000 prisoners sentenced under the law committed a nonviolent third-strike crime.

Now a ballot initiative to reform the law has surfaced. Among other things, it would require a third strike to be a "serious" or violent crime and eliminate several crimes that now count as strikes. It already has gathered nearly twice as many signatures as needed and will almost surely qualify for the November ballot.

The injustice of the current three-strikes law is so glaring, its application so arbitrary, that I will happily vote for the proposition -- despite my concern that the measure would face a bitter, uphill and potentially fatal battle because of its flaws. Defeat could doom real, sustainable and achievable reform of the law's mandatory sentencing guidelines and derail a growing recognition that rehabilitation and reentry programs must play a far bigger role in the state's criminal justice system than they do today.

Although justice demands that reform be applied retroactively, critics will point out that by making the initiative retroactive, its authors also created its central weakness. As many as 33,000 of the state's 160,000 prisoners could be eligible for resentencing or release over the next several years if the measure passed. The vast majority would have received little or no rehabilitative services while in prison and, as things now stand, would receive little or no guidance on reentering society and finding a job. They would join the roughly 100 convicts paroled daily in Los Angeles County -- more than any other county in America.