FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                                  

Thursday, September 23, 2004           

CONTACTS:

Sandy Harrison 916/ 731-5428, cell 916/996-2406; sacramentosandy@hotmail.com

Mark Capitolo 916/ 372-3729, cell 916/267-8894; mark@capitolo.net                

STUDY FINDS NEED FOR

THREE STRIKES REFORM

A study released today by the Justice Policy Institute found California ’s “three-strikes” sentencing law extremely out of step with the rest of the country, and concluded that the law needs to be reformed.

  “This clearly proves the folly of imposing these unfair and extremely wasteful life sentences on petty, non-violent offenders,” said Yes on 66, “Fix Three Strikes” campaign leader Joe Klaas. “It’s time to reform our law, to keep repeat violent criminals in prison for a very long time, provide fairer sentences for less serious offenses, and to quit wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year.”

The report found that California , the only state in which a non-violent felony can trigger a third-strike life sentence, imprisons four times as many people under the law as all the other states combined, despite having just a third of the population of those states. However, California didn’t enjoy a greater drop in crime than those other states.

Additionally, it compared California , a large state with a draconian three-strikes law, and New York , a large state without one. It found California ’s incarceration skyrocketing in the past decade and New York ’s declining. However, New York ’s violent crime rate dropped significantly greater rate than California ’s.