Two California men received 25-years-to-life sentences for shoplifting because the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ law requires harsh sentences for their relatively minor offenses since they were preceded by two felony convictions. Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the ‘three strikes’ law enacted in 24 states and by the federal government is constitutional. However, their divided ruling shows the controversial nature of a law that can give shoplifters life in prison, and the law fails to individually evaluate specific crimes and retain the power of juries and judges and to make rehabilitation a priority.
The ‘three strikes’ law bases judgment of one crime on previous ones that do not directly relate to the offense being tried. Although the Supreme Court still has not clarified how exactly ‘grossly disproportionate’ a sentence may be, shoplifters should not be getting life in prison. Trials should be decided on a case-by-case basis, and sentences should originally be appropriate so criminals perform their debt to society and can move on. Especially considering the overcrowding of facilities and the expense that goes with it, maximum-security prisons must be reserved for murderers, rapists and other violent criminals.
The law also takes individual decisions out of the hands of juries and judges, causing serious implications for basic American legal principles. Legal cases are made subjective by the structure of our legal system, and they should be because each case involves different circumstances, crimes and defendants. Judges and juries must have the power to evaluate the specifics of every case, and rightly take previous records into account during sentencing.
While prison is designed to make convicts learn their lessons and become reputable members of society, more effective rehabilitation would go much further toward achieving this goal than the ‘three strikes’ law. Those who insist on repeating criminal activity should face harsher punishments, but our legal system already allows for this. Our system should focus on using work and educational programs to make prisoners’ lives productive so they realize what they lose during prison time and how to transition back into society.
Ensuring that prisoners initially serve appropriate sentences and receive effective rehabilitation will far more benefit American society than exactly regulating how much previous offenses should matter. Judges and juries must retain their control over subjective sentencing to ensure criminals receive just prison time for all of their crimes whether it is the first or the third. Three strikes may work for the Red Sox, but such provisions deny the nature of our justice system and put punitive measures above rehabilitative ones.
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