The Props: 66 YES -- Limits on the Three Strikes Law

Under Three Strikes, as it has been applied in California, thousands of people have been condemned to unconscionably long prison terms for non-violent, petty crimes.

There are Californians serving life in prison for shoplifting a package of flashlight batteries. Or holding $2 worth of pot. Or helping somebody steal baby formula.

Baby formula.

In April, 52-year-old Delbert Meeks, who has AIDS and was homeless at the time of his arrest, and whose last felony, a robbery, was in 1991, had his 27 years-to-life sentence for failure to register as a sex offender upheld because it was his third strike.

Draconian prison stays for nonviolent crimes disrupt families and communities, worsen the effects of poverty, and generate more crime. Since California prisons make almost no attempt at rehabilitation and amount to little more than brutal training camps for criminals, many who were sent to jail for making trivial mistakes eventually return to the community bitter and hardened.

Third Strike is also grotesquely expensive. To house an inmate in the California penal system for 25 years costs about $600,000. The drain on California taxpayers is in the hundreds of millions of dollars, money that could be far better spent on keeping people out of jail.

Using scare tactics, ads by opponents of 66 charge that passage of the measure will spring thousands of violent criminals -- "murderers and rapists " -- from jail. Not true. The measure would simply require that inmates who are serving life terms imposed by non-violent third strike convictions be re-sentenced within six months of passage; some prisoners will be released, others will have sentences reduced; prosecutors can file new charges based on the original crime if they're dissatisfied with a particular outcome. Dangerous criminals will not be returned to the streets.

The bottom line is that Prop 66 returns to judges some of the discretion they need to make the punishment fit the crime. It's about time. YES.