ncluded a prior conviction for a serious felony offense.
The California "three strikes" law also limits the practice of plea bargaining and the authority for judges to grant probation. The law is designed to assure that offenders punished under the "three strikes" law will "spend at least 80% of their sentences in prison."
California's "three strikes" statute became law on 8 March 1994 exactly seven months before Proposition 184 was approved by California voters. This brief period does provide sufficient data to assess the probability that the "three strikes" law will deter the commission of the criminal acts that the law is intended to punish. The oldest of the "three strikes" statutes in the United States, the Washington state law, is only one year old, a period that is also too brief to provide meaningful data for an assessment of the deterrent effects of such laws. The assessment of the deterrent probabilities that may be associated with California's "three strikes" law, therefore, must be inferred through an analysis of the deterrent effects of other legislation that mandates harsh punishment. An assessment of the deterrent effects of capital punishment legislation appears to offer the best analogy for an assessment of the deterrent probabilities associated with "three strikes" laws.
Assessment of California's "Three Strikes" Law
While the three strikes concept enjoys wide p
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