Three Strikes: Is it effective?
Introduction
California’s draconian imprisonment law, the “Three Strikes” law, was the completion of a decade long movement of adopting “get tough on crime” laws. However, though these types of laws have resulted in a 300 percent increase in the prison population in the United States, many Americans felt more prone to violence than the decade before the enactment of the law (Vitello, 1997, p. 395).
Washington was the first state to enact these laws in 1993, so called because of the manner of their operation for incarcerating anyone convicted of three separate cases of violent offenses to serve a ...
