Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Need Action Now: 3 Strikes Provision is Bad Policy

UPDATE: Conference committee released its bill--it's not great. It passed both house and senate. Next stop Governor--he can amend and veto if it comes back to him still bad. So time to call the Gov. Read more here: http://progma.us/3X_2012Jul


UPDATE: drafting NOTES of what I learned yesterday, from your calls and my visit to Rep. Linsky's office: http://hmny.me/3xUpdate1. THEY NEED TO HEAR THAT EVEN 'BETTER' 3 STRIKES IS NOT GOOD--because 3 Strikes DOESN"T WORK  


(don't need convincing? Get on the phone, today, 1/17 Tue!: http://hmny.me/3strikes3callsRECORD - 10 minutes, 3 phone calls; easy peasy lemon squeezy. 
[shortlink to this blog: http://hmny.me/3strikesbill])

As I write (1/11/2012), there is very bad policy working its way towards law--the "Three Strikes" provision in the so-called "habitual offenders" bill which passed both chambers of the MA legislature in November.  It is now in Conference Committee, where the Senate version and the House version of the bill will be reconciled, and then go to an up-or-down vote once out of committee (in other words, no opportunity for further changes).  After that, (if passed), it would go to the Governor for signing into law.

Why "three strikes is bad"
There is some excellent reporting/resources to do your own research, and I've linked a bunch below (update: this article from Baystate Banner lays it all out clearly and simply; good orientation on the good and the bad).  But essentially, "three strikes" takes away judicial authority to review individual convictions and make the appropriate, contextual judgement call for sentencing.  "Three strikes" lumps together crimes that may not be appropriate for the sentencing. And--it is ineffective/irrelevant as a deterrent. Three strikes legislation has all kinds of negative consequences on prisons, costs and more. States across the nation are rolling back three-strikes legislation.  So it's mind-boggling to me that Massachusetts--Massachusetts!--is on the verge of introducing it into law!

Here's the good news
Even tho the bill is well on its way to being signed into law, renewed public and media scrutiny has opened a window wherein we can exert pressure to improve the bill.

But we need to do this soon--and for maximum impact, in a coordinated manner.
TAKE ACTION: 
- timeline 
- places to pressure
- check in and suggested script  

Where in the process we can have an effect: To turn around a bill that is coming so close to law is not impossible but it will take effort.  We have 3 points of entry to make an impact:
  1. Affecting the compromise bill / the Conference Committee's work*
  2. Affecting our legislators' up/down vote on the compromise bill
  3. Affecting the Governor's signature or veto
This translates to these actions:
  1. Calling/contacting our legislators to ask them to pressure the Conference Committee to remove the 3 strikes and other onerous provisions, to put out a balanced bill
  2. Calling/contacting the Governor and asking, if the Conference Committee's compromise legislation is unbalanced/unfair (3 strikes), that the Governor veto that bill.
  3. Calling/contacting our legislators to ask that, if the Conference Committee's compromise legislation is unbalanced/unfair (3 strikes), that they (our State Reps and State Senators) VOTE NO on the bill.

What exactly you can do:  How we/you do this contact varies. At a minimum, I suggest that we all MAKE THE 3 PHONE CALLS (State Senator, State Legislator, Governor) on Tuesday, the day after Martin Luther King day.  By doing this all on the same day, our individual voices/messages can be amplified by virtue of coming on the same day... Our goal being to break thru the bubble of Beacon Hill as usual.

*Will you commit to doing this action (3 phone calls) on Tuesday, January 17?  We have CALL TOOLS at this link, including suggested scripts! Please also sign this ONLINE PETITION!

For those willing to do a little more: an email/letter/fax to Gov., State Senator, State Legislators in the following week, then letters to the editor. IF YOU'RE READY/WILLING TO DO THIS EXTRA WORK, contact me, and let's try to coordinate! We do not know when the conference committee will finish its work. So we need to make sure we get our action in before it's too late. 

FROM THE BOSTON PHOENIX:
Harvard University School of Law professor Charles Ogletree: "You should be fired up," he said. "We've never seen our system so insane, horrendous, backward, and unjust." 
Indeed, "three strikes" has been a proven failure. These measures are often passed by reactionary politicians looking to appear tough on crime. But in case study after case study, in state after state, these policies have had little deterrent effect, leading instead to swollen prisons, bureaucratic nightmares, and, in the case of California, straight-up financial ruin. 
"Three strikes" bills have also struck minority communities disproportionately hard. A 2004 study by the nonprofit and nonpartisan Justice Policy Institute found that Latino and African Americans were imprisoned under California's three-strikes law at rates far higher than whites. 
Furthermore, this type of punitive legislation has also come under fire from a broad range of critics for its financial impact; last year the conservative-leaning United States Supreme Court even acknowledged the devastating effect of California's "three strikes" law, ordering the state to free 34,000 inmates from its overcrowded prisons. 
The measure currently sits in committee limbo after passing both the State House of Representatives and State Senate, and is expected to arrive on Governor Deval Patrick's desk sometime soon.
READ UP / RESOURCES:

OVERVIEWS AND THE BILL'S POLITICAL PROSPECTS/JOURNEY
THREE STRIKES / MINIMUM MANDATORY SENTENCING DOESN'T WORK
  • Even Grover Norquist agrees: minimum mandatory sentences are bad policy--and expensive:  http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Norquist090714.pdf
    • "Viewed through the skeptical eye I train on all other government programs, I have concluded that mandatory minimum sentencing policies are not worth the high cost to America’s taxpayers."
    • "The biggest problem from the perspective of the taxpayer, however, is that mandatory minimum sentencing policies have proven prohibitively expensive."
    • "Republican Governor – John Engler of Michigan – who signed into law the first major repeal of state mandatory minimum sentences.  Engler’s action saved Michigan taxpayers $40 million in prison costs without jeopardizing public safety."
    • "questioning the wisdom of mandatory minimums has nothing to do with being soft on crime"
  • "reforms to our criminal justice system should be data-driven and fiscally responsible.  We believe this bill fails on both counts." Black and Latino Legislative Caucus Letter to Colleagues Regarding the Sentencing Reform Bill | Sonia Chang-Diaz (July 2012) http://goo.gl/HdWDz
  • Why should you care about #3Strikes? Listen up: http://t.co/Qk3QiPa4 (ACLU podcast; 1/18/2012)
  • Calling out 'three strikes' - News Features (Boston Phoenix) (1/6/2012) 
  • State careens in wrong direction on crime - The Podium - Boston.com (1/6/2012) 
  • How 'three strikes' legislation fails - The Editorial Page - Boston Phoenix - 1/4/12 
  • 2002!: 10 Reasons to Oppose "3 Strikes, You're Out" | American Civil Liberties Union
  • Three Strikes: Ineffective, Costly - Los Angeles Times (1999) 
    • " The study, by the Justice Policy Institute in San Francisco, found that crime had fallen at about the same rate in counties that aggressively enforce the three-strikes law, like Los Angeles, as in those that do not, like Alameda and San Francisco."
  • Mandatory minimum repeals
  • Compare mandatory minimums
  • Bipartisan support to repeal mandatory minimums
  • http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/3strikes.pdf
  • Three strikes law explained 
  • A Primer: Three Strikes: The Impact After More Than a Decade (CA) (Oct. 2005): last section: in sum, there's NO clear evidence that 3 strikes reduced crime. Reductions in crime in "3 strikes" locations CORRESPOND TO WIDER TRENDS with similar reductions in crime (withOUT 3 strikes).  
  • Haven't sifted thru these (from a "pro" and "con" list), but for your reference: 
    • Families to Amend California's Three Strikes : FACTS About California's Three Strikes Law 
    • California's New Three-Strikes Law: Benefits, Costs, and Alternatives | 
    • Three Strikes Laws A Real or Imagined Deterrent to Crime? - Human Rights Magazine, Spring 2002 | Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities  
      • Beyond the moral question, "three strikes" opponents have mounting empirical evidence that "three strikes" cannot deliver on its overblown promises. But legislative reform, difficult under normal circumstance due to politicians’ fears of being labeled soft on crime, is doubly difficult because of the supermajority requirement. We are left hoping that the courts will save us from our own excesses; whether they will is very much up for grabs. 
      • Empirical studies suggest that California would have experienced virtually all of its decline in crime without "three strikes." At the same time, "three strikes" will have a significant cumulative effect on the size of the prison population, an expense that will grow over time. One effect will be to increase the number of older prisoners, a group that represents a low social risk because most offenders become less criminally active as they age. Not only are older prisoners not likely to commit crimes if set free, but they cost the state much more to keep incarcerated than younger, healthier offenders.
        None of this comes as a surprise to many commentators who doubted the wisdom of "three strikes," certainly as it was enacted in California. But none of us who opposed "three strikes" can take much comfort in knowing that our concerns were borne out. The important policy question is how can we reform the law to avoid its excesses?
        Few politicians were willing to oppose "three strikes" during its passage. And while most politicians in the past decade have feared being labeled as soft on crime, that fear was exacerbated during the legislation’s passage. Aided by the kidnapping and murder of young Polly Klaas, Mike Reynolds, the father of a murder victim, pushed the bill through the legislature with remarkable resolve. He was unwilling to compromise or allow amendments to the bill (or to a virtually identical ballot initiative). His sway with the legislature was extraordinary, with most afraid that if they opposed him, he would portray them as soft on crime. Since the law’s passage, passions have cooled somewhat. But one legacy of the charged political environment in which the law passed is that its amendment requires a supermajority. As a result, even those few politicians who are now willing to propose amendments face an uphill battle at best.
ON THE UGLY REALITY OF OUR PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
ON PRISON REFORMS/MATERIALS:
ARCHIVES
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