gsociety entirely too much money (Walker, 1998). The threestrikes law in California stipulates that your first two“strikes” are acquired when you commit two serious orviolent felonies. However the third strike can be any typeof felony, violent or nonviolent (Schafer, 1999). For thisreason, more and more criminals are being put away,especially in California, for third strikes that arenonviolent and relatively small crimes and overcrowding ourprisons at a fast rate. In 1996, males under the age of twenty-five accountedfor forty-five percent of the individuals arrested for indexcrimes (Schafer, 1999). This raises questions for skepticsof three strikes laws. Why incarcerate offenders for lifewhen their criminal tendencies statistically drop after acertain age? These opponents assert that three strikes lawssubject offenders to over-incarceration. This leads to thenext issue concerning money. Burr states in his studycomparing the impact of the three strikes law in Californiato the impact in Canada that “over-incarceration does notserve the interest of justice or the interests of thetaxpayer” (2000: 5). Walker estimates that if Californiawere to implement the new law to the full extent for thenext twenty-five years, the state would have to pay an extra$5.5 billion (1998). A significant piece of this estimatewould be funding the incarceration of elderly prisoners whorequire more funds to maintain (Walker, 1998). The third reason Walker uses to support his propositionis that the law will not reduce crime (1998). He supportsthis claim by stating that there is no evidence that crimehas been reduced by these laws and that the law is notconsistently enforced (1998). Burr affirms this statementin his own study by stating that “no study has demonstratedthat the three strikes law has reduced violence” (2000). Asstated earlier, the three strikes law has not beenadministered by all the states that curren...
