Mandatory Sentencing -"Three Strikes and You're Out"

General  |  Support  | Oppose  |  Law

General

Three Strikes and You're Out:  A Review of State Legislation
PDF and text versions of the National Institute of Justice's research brief reviewing mandatory sentencing laws in 24 states, most notably California and Washington.

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Support

Three Strikes and You're Out
Presents studies, text of the California Three Strikes answers to the nine most frequent objections in regard toThree Strikes.  Created by Mike Reynolds, co-author of the Three Strikes law.

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Oppose

10 Reasons to Oppose “3 Strikes and You're Out”
Arguments against Three Strikes laws from the American Civil Liberties Union, whose mission is “to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.”

Arguing Three Strikes
An article originally published in the New York Times Magazine, along with an accompanying video, that argues that California’s Three Strikes law has had unintended consequences and often punishes nonviolent crimes with the penalty of a life sentence.

FACTS – Families to Amend California’s 3-Strikes
News, personal stories, pictures, video clips, a timeline, and summaries of California court cases from a group that wants to amend the state’s 3-strikes law so it applies only to violent felonies. 

Families Against Mandatory Minimums
A quarterly newsletter, congressional information, news, photographs and stories of people impacted by mandatory sentencing laws, and a history of sentencing laws. 

Three Strikes Basics
An explanation of the drawbacks of California’s Three Strikes Law.  From the Stanford Three Strikes Project,  “the only legal organization in the country devoted to representing individuals serving life sentences under California's Three Strikes law.”

Law

A Primer: Three Strikes – The Impact After More Than a Decade
A report prepared for California's Legislative Analyst's Office that explains the rationale for the state's Three Strikes law, challenges to the law, and its legal evolution.  It also defines important terms in sentencing and discusses the impact of Three Strikes on criminal sentencing, size of the prison population, public safety, and crime rates from 1994-2004, and conjectures that local implementation of the current law could change over time.

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Last Updated: December 30, 2011