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If three felony arrests and convictions aren’t enough to convince or discourage you from committing crimes, maybe you don’t belong among the law abiding citizens of this country? How hard can it be to learn from the first two and get your act together?
Okay you get arrested for doing drugs. While in handcuffs they notice there are children in your home so they add a second charge of endangering children. Now they search your home and they find a firearm in your closet.
Boom three separate charges. You are going away for life.
This idea that there would be a pause between charges is silly.
You are wearing handcuffs, maybe they transferred you from your home to the backseat of a police car, how much of a delay is that?
Sitting in the back of a police car, what opportunity do you have to 'get your act together'?
And that guy you speak of, the judge will remember that.
"Do you recall what was said at our last discussion? Didn't you promise me that I'll never hear from you again?"
And the judge will have no motive to be lenient again.
Amazing that so many people wonder why.
Problem is he can likely reoffend in another state and if a pre-sentencing report does not pick up the previous convictions and/or deals made then the judge in the newer case will have no clue. There is no centralized system in the US to track all criminals and what deals were made for their benefit.
What are your thoughts on three strikes laws for criminals?
Terrible law!
Judges should be given the latitude and trust to handle each case individually.
"Three strikes" endangers police officers for all the reasons we all know, and fills up prisons needlessly. Harsh sentences, yes; automatic life, no.
Firearm possession is not a crime, until you have been arrested for drug possession, then it suddenly becomes a crime and you can be convicted of multiple crimes.
You haven't addressed the point that I made. Either firearms possession is or isn't a crime, regardless of social consciousness.
You haven't addressed the point that I made. Either firearms possession is or isn't a crime, regardless of social consciousness.
You can be perfectly legal to purchase and possess a firearm, right up to the moment when you have been arrested for a minor crime, then suddenly if the DA can make it seem firearm possession should be illegal for you, then poof it is illegal and that makes your second crime. If there were drugs on-scene during your arrest, that makes three crimes, bye bye.
Terrible law!
Judges should be given the latitude and trust to handle each case individually.
"Three strikes" endangers police officers for all the reasons we all know, and fills up prisons needlessly. Harsh sentences, yes; automatic life, no.
I agree that the court should not be forced into an arbitrary sentence but I favor sentencing guidelines as a means of guarding against disparity that might creep in without some sort of controls.
There is so much discretion at every level that the three-strikes law can be played different ways. I once helped write a state's criminal code and every legislator wanted to add some sort of get tough rule so they could go home and pander to the voters. The actual new provisions were usually duplicating something already sufficiently covered in the code so a prosecutor could decide how they wanted to charge and prosecute a case.
The legislative committee reviewing the proposed criminal code had over twenty versions to examine and some looked like a Christmas tree with added new crimes and new sentences. Once approved and signed into law, that code was re-written once again a few years later. It is an easy way to get tough-on-crime points with voters.
If three felony arrests and convictions aren’t enough to convince or discourage you from committing crimes, maybe you don’t belong among the law abiding citizens of this country? How hard can it be to learn from the first two and get your act together?
And the point remains that you have to break down the felonies and tell us what the person actually did.
If someone is sitting at home using cocaine or methamphetamines that is felony in most places. If they get arrested for that three times that would mean a life sentence under some "three strikes laws".
I think rather than sentence them to life that serious drug rehabilitation is in order.
'Conservative minded' folk here. People makes mistakes... but I think three strikes is one too many. At this point, in what is quickly becoming a 'lawless' society, .
That's completely false! In fact, crime has gone down. There is also no evidence that mass incarceration makes us any safer. With 25% of the world's inmates, while we're only 5% of the world population, we should be super safe. That's clearly not the case.
That crime is on the rise or the world becoming more dangerous is a myth. It's been well debunked.
Prison should not be about punishment or rehabilitation. The latter is sketchy hit and miss at the very best. The former has been displaced by the notion that prisoners have rights.
Prison is about confinement. Confinement is the 100% certain way to prevent criminals from committing crimes. It is infallible. A career criminal, however defined, is not a threat when he is in prison, except to other prisoners.
The false debate between punishment and rehabilitation should be dispensed with. Keep criminals in prison to stop them from committing crimes.
But it costs a million dollars a year to keep an inmate in a California prison, so do you put a chronic car thief in prison for 15 or 20 years? It would be far cheaper to just buy his victims new cars. Someone has to make decisions about which prisoners we are afraid of rather than just angry with and lock up the ones who pose an immediate threat to the public and deal with the others the best we can.
If three felony arrests and convictions aren’t enough to convince or discourage you from committing crimes, maybe you don’t belong among the law abiding citizens of this country? How hard can it be to learn from the first two and get your act together?
Long sentences do not deter people from committing crime. What does deter people from breaking the law is the certainty that they will be caught and the celerity (swiftness) between arrest and punishment. This is from DOJ:
Quote:
Certainty refers to the likelihood of being caught and punished for the commission of a crime. Research underscores the more significant role that certainty plays in deterrence than severity — it is the certainty of being caught that deters a person from committing crime, not the fear of being punished or the severity of the punishment. Effective policing that leads to swift and certain (but not necessarily
severe) sanctions is a better deterrent than the threat of incarceration. In addition, there is no evidence that the deterrent effect increases when the likelihood of conviction increases. Nor is there any evidence that the deterrent effect increases when the likelihood of imprisonment increases. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
There's lots of good information in that piece, you might want to read it.
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