Law enforcementEvidence suggests that three-strikes law does not deter crime

Contrary to what police, politicians, and the public believe about the effectiveness of California’s three-strikes law, research by a University of California, Riverside criminologist has found that the get-tough-on-criminals policy voters approved in 1994 has done nothing to reduce the crime rate.

In a rigorous analysis of crime in California and the nation, sociology professor Robert Nash Parker determined that crime has been decreasing at about the same rate in every state for twenty years, regardless of whether three-strikes policies are in place or not.

Parker’s findings were published recently in the California Journal of Politics and Policy. The online journal publishes cutting-edge research on national, state, and local government, electoral politics, and public policy formation and implementation.

A university of California, Riverside release reports that California’s three-strikes law imposes a minimum sentence of twenty-five years to life on the third felony conviction for offenders with prior serious or violent felony convictions. Approximately 23,000 individuals have been incarcerated under three strikes. Proposition 36, on the 6 November ballot, would impose the life sentence only when the new felony conviction is serious or violent.

“There is not a single shred of scientific evidence, research or data to show that three strikes caused a 100 percent decline in violence in California or elsewhere in the last twenty years,” Parker said, adding that the downward trend began two years before the California law was enacted.

Violent crime decreased by about the same rate in California and other three-strikes states as well as those without similar legislation, Parker found. Other researchers who have examined crime in California cities and counties since the legislation took effect have reached similar conclusions, he noted.

“Three-strikes is not driving the trend in violent crime,” Parker said.

Nor is threat of a life sentence for repeat offenders a deterrent, he added, citing the work of other researchers on offender behavior which found that neither prior arrests nor prior convictions had any impact on an individual offender’s perception of being caught, suggesting that three-strikes laws are not the deterrent that law enforcement officials, politicians and the public would like to believe.

If three-strikes laws do not account for the significant decline in violent crime, what does? Alcohol consumption and unemployment, Parker believes.

Citing earlier research, analyses of sixty years of national crime data investigated alcohol consumption, unemployment, poverty, proportion of young people in the population, average earnings, welfare payments, and U.S. involvement in war as possible influences