shoplift writes: "http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010823/ts/three_ strikes_1.html


The assistant director at The Sentencing Project was mighty kind to California voters when he described the "countervailing trends" in attitudes toward mandatory sentencing. Much of the criminal reform currently underway is based on middle-class self-interest. I’ve encountered too many Proposition 36 supporters who were otherwise anti-crime zealots, contemporary versions of the kind of folks who had a picnic at the public hanging, circa 1890. Work-release programs and other alternative sentencing programs such as drug courts spare the prison system from having to house the drug-using middle-class with the traditional prison population, the poor. Having supported the tough-on-crime laws, the middle class is now in reaction against its own initiatives to expand the criminal class. Instead of repealing the mandatory sentencing acts that actually increased the number of non-violent inmates in prison, Proposition 36 seems like it was voted in as an escape clause for middle-class pot-smokers and other recreational drug-users, who will now be sent to treatment instead of jail. To be sure, the law doesn't benefit the middle-class exclusively, but this was the reason for the proposal's success."