t themselves is difficult. We must look closely at what this legislation has done so far. It has placed many more non-violent offenders in prison than violent offenders. The legislation stands to cost the state millions of dollars per year to incarcerate people of longer prison terms. Clearly the three-strikes law has not served its intended purpose it must be repealed. An analysis of Department of Corrections data by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, CA, in Nov, 1995 indicates that since the enactment of California's "Three Strikes" law two years ago, 192 have "struck out" for marijuana possession, compared to 40 for murder, 25 for rape, and 24 for kidnapping. I have a strong proposition for the California Legislature...and that is a strict and logical reform to the present Criminal Justice System in California. "The California Legislature is to be commended for its stance on crime. Not for their "get tough" policies such as the "Three Strikes" law but for their enactment of a little known section of the Penal Code entitled the "Community Based Punishment Act of 1994." (Senator Quentin Kopp, Time Magazine Feb 14, 1996). By passage of this act, the State of California has acknowledged the limitations of incarceration as both punishment and a deterrent to criminal behavior. The legislature has in fact declared that "California's criminal justice system is seriously out of balance in its heavy dependence upon prison facilities and jails for punishment and its lack of appropriate punishment for non-violent offenders and substance abusers who could be successfully treated in appropriate, less restrictive programs without any increase in danger to the public." In essence, this law proposes a community based system of intermediate restrictions for non-violent offenders that fall between jail time and traditional probation such as home detention with electronic monitoring, boot camps, mandatory community service an...
