This 7 page paper considers California's Proposition 184, the Three Strikes Law. The writer argues that the state is paying exorbitant amounts of money to keep non-violent offenders, mostly accused of minor drug offenses, behind bars. The writer further suggests that other states might not want to follow California's lead in this area. There are 8 sources listed in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: LM1_TLC3stik.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
of illegal drugs. However, at the helm of this controversial topic is the mandate of minimum drug sentencing for what some consider to be insignificant usage; as such, people
caught with what would have one time been considered a negligible amount of cocaine are now - under new and forceful laws - looking at a mandatory minimal jail sentence.
"Those who commit crimes should be punished. And those who commit repeated, violent crimes should be told, When you commit a third violent crime, you will be put
away, and put away for good. Three strikes, and you are out!" (Cannon, 1998, p. PG). Many will contend that this particular trend toward minimizing drug usage is targeted
at minorities, inasmuch as statistics show a lopsided number of convictions with regard to race. As evidence of this, the years between 1988 and 1994 in Californias Los Angeles
County recorded not a single white crack cocaine prosecution Between 1988 and 1994, no whites in Los Angeles County were prosecuted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses. However,
it is important for the student to realize that statistics again demonstrate that blacks represent the primary ethnicity that deals in this particular drug. Said former Drug Enforcement Agency
Administrator Robert Bonner, "A very, very large percentage of those dealing in crack cocaine, in a visible way on the street corners of Los Angeles and elsewhere, happen to be
black. If you targeted heroin coming out of Southeast Asia, you can rest assured that the majority of traffickers would be ethnic Chinese" (Parker, 1995, p. PG).
Pertinent to the description and analysis of the current social policy is the statement of goals of this particular social policy. Is California attempting