Prison Industry Series
The Perpetual Prisoner Machine by Joel Dyer, 2000, Excerpts
In the early 1990s, Fresno, California photographer Mike Reynolds, whose daughter had been murdered by a parolee, was working to secure signatures for a citizens’ initiative that would greatly increase the sentences of repeat violent offenders. Reynolds wasn’t having much success, however. Several of his attempts had died in legislative committees, and in general, politicians did not support his attempts.
In 1993, Polly Klass, a twelve-year-old girl, was abducted during a slumber party at her suburban home in Petaluma, California. Klaas was eventually found murdered, but not before the local and national media had thrown the story into the spotlight. Night after night, week after week, Californians and the rest of America watched as Polly’s father made emotional pleas for information on his daughter’s whereabouts. Eventually, Richard Allen Davis was arrested and admitted to the kidnapping, and murder. Davis has been previously arrested for burglary and kidnapping, so the stage was now set for Mike Reynolds and his citizens’ initiative.
Prior to the Klaas murder, then California governor Pete Wilson had refused to support Reynolds’s initiative, now known by the name “three strikes and you’re out,” but that was before the Klaas case had worked the electorate into an anti-criminal lather. Wilson and a senior California senator both spoke at the little girl’s funeral. They turned the Klaas case into an example of everything that was supposedly wrong with the justice system. Even President Clinton singled out the Klaas case in his State of the Union Address, blaming leniency and soft headedness on crime as the cause for Polly’s death.
Within a few weeks of Polly’s murder, nearly every candidate running for a major California office, regardless of party affiliation, had endorsed Reynold’s three-strike initiative. ‘’On March 9, 1994, Wilson signed Assembly Bill 971 – three strikes – into law. In a knee-jerk reaction to a horrible tragedy, Californians would now lead the way in what they believed would be a war on violent crime. They would do it for Polly Klaas.
Impact – More Prisoners – More Prisons
Most Californians were under the impression that the new law would ensure that repeat violent offenders would be permanently removed from society, but few realized that three strikes was not reserved for violent offenders alone. It could be applied to a wide variety of offenses such as stealing vitamins.
A full 70 percent of all three-strikes prosecutions in California have been for nonviolent and nonserious offenses. Prior to three strikes, 94 percent of all cases in California were handled through plea bargaining. After three strikes, only 14 percent of those faced with a second strike and only 6 percent of those facing a third strike have sought a plea agreement. Jury trials have increased by 150 to 300 percent as a result of three strikes.
This predetermined sentencing structure has severely tied the hands of both the judicial system and the nation’s pardon and parole boards. Judges can no longer take into account the particulars of individual cases. Judges have been turned into little more than courtroom props.
Attorney General Janet Reno voiced grave concern over mandatory sentencing. Reno believes that such sentencing should by restricted to violent criminals only and points out that most individuals receiving mandatory sentences are nonviolent, low-level drug defendants. 70 to 80 percent of all of those being affected by mandatory sentencing measures are nonviolent offenders – many of them first time, low-level drug offenders. Nonviolent criminals have replaced violent offenders in our prisons.
