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Shaming the Three Strikes Law

By Jonathan Simor

If we are to ever escape the gravitational pull of mass incarceration, we are going to need not just more jeremiads against our current regime, but positive accounts of pathways out. Emily Bazelon in the Sunday Times Magazine provides just such an optimistic account of an emerging challenge to the hegemony of California's toxic "Three-Strikes" law which is rapidly filling its prisons with expensive to manage (because largely hopeless) and permanent prisoners. Her account is especially interesting because it links up two elements generally missing in the discussion of whose responsible for mass incarceration which tends to focus on governors, legislatures, correctional officer unions. Bazelon focuses on the interesting alignment of a Republican District Attorney of Los Angeles (now running for Attorney General), and a law school clinic at Stanford aimed at challenging 3-Strike sentences through collateral appeals...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on May 25, 2010 (boomark / email).