The Impact of `Three Strikes and You're Out'

Over the past few years, over 24 states and Congress have passed legislation under the slogan of `three strikes and you're out'. As part of the general political thrust to mandate increasingly tougher prison terms for repeat offenders, this form of legislation seeks to ensure that habitual offenders receive the toughest sentence available to the state absent the death penalty - life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In this article, a review of what has been the impact of these laws is made. Surprisingly, with the noted exception of California, there has been virtually no impact on the courts, local jails or state prisons. Nor does there appear to be any impact on crime rates. Even in California, where the law was expected to have a major impact, it appears that all of the projections were in error. The article concludes that this form of legislation was carefully crafted to be largely symbolic. However, the gross errors in predicting the impact of these and other laws by some of the most prestigious researchers underscore how little we know about change within the criminal justice system.